Powers v. Beasley’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Dr. Adams testified that the electrocardiograph of Mr. Beasley’s heart taken on February 5,1954, showed “a complete recovery from his infarction” and “did not even show his old injury”, but that a previous infarction “is not always manifested on subsequent electrocardiographs ’ ’. When asked whether the second attack was “independent of” the first, Dr. Adams’ reply was “that would be my impression, Sir, because of the duration between the two”. That “clinically” Mr. Beasley “had recovered from his first heart attack” and that “apparently” an “independent heart attack caused his death”. He said that there is no way of knowing whether the second attack would have occurred if he had never had the first. Again, in answer to the question as to whether there was any connection between the first and second attack he said that he could not say whether the first attack was either a direct cause or a contributing cause to the second attack, but that “it may be a contributing factor”, meaning only, as we understand his testimony as a whole, that the first attack could be a contributing factor to the second. Dr. Adams also testified that a heart attack as severe as the first attack upon Mr. Beasley leaves the heart “with some impairment of function”, and that when the second attack came on “the first one certainly didn’t help the situation any. It made his heart more damaged than it previously was”. And that “all I can say is this, that if you already have a damaged heart to put it simpl”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. City of Lawrenceburg v. Nelson