Ritchie v. Stenius’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 10 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The jury had a right to be informed of the character and antecedents of the witness, whose testimony they were called upon to weigh. While it is true the rule does not allow an attack upon character in this class of cases by specific acts, yet, when the party is called as a witness in his own behalf, he stands to the case like any other witness, and subject to the same rules of cross-examination as any other witness, and this was a proper subject of cross-examination. Whatever his answers may have been to these inquiries, the defendant would undoubtedly have been bound by them, but as a matter of cross-examination it was proper.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Aronson v. Baldwin

2. ““If you find that he did use the words charged in the declaration, but that they were the mere outburst of excitement and passion, induced by the conduct and actions of the plaintiff at defendant’s house and in plaintiff’s saloon, and were not intended to charge the plaintiff with the commission of a crime, and if those who heard them did not. understand that they charged the commission of a crime, but were produced by the result of the excitement so produced, your verdict must be for defendant.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Ellis v. Whtehead