Elliott v. Lea County’s Empirical Analysis
1954
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently March 1977
24 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 City of Dallas v. Smith · Barker v. City of Santa Fe · 1 E.H. Smith 49 - Hughes v. . County of Monroe · White v. Alabama Insane Hospital · Vigil v. Penitentiary of New Mexico
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In our opinion, nothing has happened in this state during the last thirty-one years which justifies our abandoning our declared policy. If the people of this state desire any change in this policy, it can be and should be done through the legislature and not by judicial fiat.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““Except in a few jurisdictions, it is the general rule that counties are not subject to liability for torts, in the absence of statutory or constitutional provisions which either expressly or by implication impose such liability on them. More strictly, a county is not liable, in the absence of statutory or constitutional provision, for its failure to perform a duty, or' for its negligent performance of a duty, when exercising governmental functions and acting as an agency of the state, even when the duty is imposed by statute; and there is no distinction in the application of this rule between the neglect to perform an act which ought to have been performed, and the performance of the duty in a negligent manner. * * * ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““ * * * The decisions in those cases rested upon the distinction between governmental and proprietary functions. The court held, in each case, that in supplying hospital care to paying patients the hospitals were acting in a proprietary and corporate capacity, and therefore liable to their patients for the negligence of its employees. The above cases represent decidedly the minority rule and we refuse to follow them.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Lee v. Dunklee
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.