5 Mass. App. Ct. 304 - McKenna v. Begin’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 1 district · 41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 45 later decisions — most recently September 2018 · most notably Pugh v. Holmes (1979), Conway v. Electro Switch Corp. (1988)
2 federal appellate · 1 district · 41 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Story Parchment Co. v. Paterson Parchment Paper Co. · California Department of Human Resources Development v. Java · 10 Cal. 3d 616 - Green v. Superior Court · Ethel Javins v. First National Realty Corporation, Rudolph Saunders v. First National Realty Corporation, Stanley Gross v. First National Realty Corporation · Boston Housing Authority v. Hemingway
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We recognize that computing damages under this approach involves some uncertainty. Useful expert testimony is unlikely to be readily available as to the ‘worth’ of the defects [citation omitted], and even if it were available, the imposition upon indigent tenants of the financial burden of supplying expert witnesses would seriously diminish the effectiveness of the relief contemplated in our earlier opinion.... However, damages in this case ‘do not differ significantly from a host of analogous situations, in both contract and tort law, in which damages cannot be computed with complete certainty.’ [citation omitted] It is settled that mere uncertainty in assessing the amount of damages should not jeopardize an injured party’s right to recover as long as those damages are the certain result of the wrongdoing, [citations omitted] A wrongdoer may not complain that damages cannot be measured precisely where he alone is responsible for the harm, [citations omitted] While the damages may not be determined by speculation or guess, an approximate result is permissible if the evidence shows the extent of damages to be a matter of just and reasonable inference.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“On the [one] hand, there may be instances in which minor violations in conjunction with major violations or a multitude of minor violations with a cumulative effect on habitability should be taken into consideration in reducing rent.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Teller v. McCoy“While the damages may not be determined by speculation or guess, an approximate result is permissible if the evidence shows the extent of damages to be a matter of just and reasonable inference.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.