114 Ohio App. 3d 746 - Didier v. Johns’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

15 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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “To illustrate the inappropriateness of applying the `but for' analysis in law, imagine that a child's ball rolls into the street of a suburban neighborhood. The first car whose driver sees it properly rolls to a stop or a slow crawl. The next succeeding eight drivers do the same. However, a hopped-up teenager driving the tenth car slams into the rear of the ninth car. Physically, the accident would not have happened `but for' the ball in the street. But the analysis would not stop there. The ball possibly would not be in the street `but for' the negligence of the child (or children), the negligence of the parent(s) or babysitter on the scene, the lack of a playground (forcing the children to play in their front yards), etc., etc. etc., ad infinitum. Are we to direct all rear-end collisions into an endless search of discovery for some tint of negligence down the road, no matter how far removed? We think not. The legal analysis must focus on the direct per se negligence of the violator of the assured clear distance rule, as distinct from a physical analysis made pursuant to the `but for' theory.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Mitchell v. Kuchar, Unpublished Decision (7-21-2005)

2. “[t]his non-negligent act broke the chain of causation between [the sleeping driver's] negligence and [the motorcyclist's] negligence.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Riojas v. Grant County Public Utility Dist.