Wrongful death at common law
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 237 U.S. 648 - St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway Co. v. Craft · 1915Most cited · 496 citing opinions
By the common law the death of a human being, although wrongfully caused, affords no basis for a recovery of damages, and a right of action for personal injuries dies with the person injured. Therefore in cases like this the right of recovery depends entirely upon statute law.
How often courts cite the case defining “Wrongful death at common law”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “Wrongful death at common law” — 496 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.