Ostrowski v. Azzara’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 2 district · 87 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 103 later decisions — most recently February 2018 · most notably Scafidi v. Seiler (1990), Conklin v. Weisman (1996)
9 federal appellate · 2 district · 87 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 Suter v. San Angelo Foundry & MacHine Company · Ayers v. Township of Jackson · Kelly v. Gwinnell · Procanik by Procanik v. Cillo · Caputzal v. Lindsay 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 103 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a]voidable consequences ... come[ ] into action when the injured party's carelessness occurs after the defendant's legal wrong has been committed”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“it would be the bitterest irony if the rule of comparative negligence, designed to ameliorate the harshness of contributory negligence, should serve to shut out any recovery to one who would otherwise have recovered under the law of contributory negligence [because her contributory conduct was relevant to avoidable consequences rather than contributory negligence].”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[t]he doctrine of avoidable consequences comes into play at a later stage. Where the defendant has already committed an actionable wrong, whether tort or breach of contract, then this doctrine [avoidable consequences] limits the plaintiffs’ recovery by disallowing only those items of damages which could reasonably have been averted ***[.] “[C]ontributory negligence is to be asserted as a complete defense, whereas the doctrine of avoidable consequences is not considered a defense at all, but merely a rule of damages by which certain particular items of loss may be excluded from consideration * * McCormick on Damages, West Publishing Company, 1935, Chapter 5, Avoidable Consequences, pages 127 et seq.; see also 61 Harvard Law Review (1947), 113, 131-134, Developments in Damages. Recognized universally, it is nonetheless understandable that variable conceptual explanations are given ranging from contributory negligence, as such, lack of proximate cause and a so-called “duty” to mitigate. [Southport Transit Co. v. Avondale Marine Ways, Inc., 234 F.2d 947, 952 (5th Cir.1956) (footnotes omitted).]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.