Pentecost v. Hudson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

54 state decisions

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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ * * *. An appellate court must rely upon the fact finder for the determination of the facts of a case. Under our system of jurisprudence, it is simply not feasible for an appellate court to retry a case which is based upon conflicting testimony. The appellate court must restrict itself to determination of questions of law and leave factual determinations to the trial court; or jury as the case may be, which has the opportunity of hearing the witnesses testify and observing their demeanor and conduct while on the witness stand. A witness’s testimony may, at the time of trial, be evasive instead of straight-forward, lacking in candor rather than truthful, or be such as makes it apparent to the listener that he is being less than honest in his testimony. These things and many others occurring in the trial are obvious to the trial court and influence his decision, but ordinarily are not apparent in the typewritten record so that the true ‘flavor’ of the case is not obtained by the reader. This is merely one of the reasons why appellate courts must rely upon the judgment of the trier of the facts. So it is in the instant case. Although it might appear from the cold record that the responsibility for the accident was possibly that of the appellee, nevertheless the trier of the facts did not think so, and there is certainly substantial evidence to support this view. Where there is substantial evidence to support the findings, we will not substitute our judgment for that of the fac”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Gish v. Hart