10 Utah 2d 174 - Fox v. Taylor’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 13 state decisions
Relationships
Relies on Mingus v. Olsson · 3 Utah 2d 210 - Beckstrom v. Williams · Morby v. Rogers · Compton v. Ogden Union Ry. & Depot Co. · Lawrence v. Denver & R. G. R. Co.
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ * * * Where the defendant does not actually know of the plaintiff’s situation of peril, the doctrine can only properly be applied where the plaintiff has gotten into a position of inextrica ble peril. An illustration of this is where a person has caught his foot in a railroad switch, or is in some other similar predicament, so that he is thereafter unable to avert the injury. In such a situation, the plaintiff’s negligence has come to rest. In such circumstances the defendant may be held responsible if he either knows, or in the exercise of reasonable care should know, of the plaintiff’s helpless situation in time to avoid the injury and fails to do so. “In regard to the application of this principle, the plaintiff here is faced with a dilemma: she was either in inextricable peril or she was not. If she was not in inextricable peril, then at any instant up to the time she got into such predicament, by the exercise of reasonable care, she could have observed the oncoming car and have avoided being hit. On the other hand, she could only have gotten into inextricable peril by getting into the path of.the defendant’s car, and her peril could be considered inextricable only if the defendant was then too close to avoid striking her. Thus, by the very description of the situation, he did not have the ‘last clear chance’ to avoid the injury. As the phrase indicates, it must be a fair and clear opportunity and not a mere possibility that the collision could have been avoided.” Fox v”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Odekirk v. Austin
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.