13 Md. App. 159 - Young v. Dietzel’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
2 district · 11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently September 1999
2 district · 11 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 Baltimore Transit Co. v. State Ex Rel. Castranda · Nizer v. Phelps · Northern Central Railway Co. v. State ex rel. Price · Baltimore & Ohio Railroad v. State ex rel. Hauer · Grier v. Rosenberg
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he legal literature generally, in looking at the origin of and reason for the doctrine of presumption of due care, confirms that its salutary purpose has utility only for a plaintiff, upon the issue of contributory negligence in a case where the victim is dead or mentally incompetent to testify. In Prosser, Law of Torts (4 th Edition, 1971), the purpose of the doctrine is discussed at p. 416: "Some few jurisdictions, because of various theories as to the basis of the rule, have held that freedom from such [contributory] negligence is as essential part of the plaintiff's cause of action, as to which he has the burden of proof. This obviously means that when there is no evidence on the issue the plaintiff must lose; and the hardship of this is so apparent in many cases that such jurisdictions have tended to relax the rule, either by aiding the plaintiff by a presumption of his own due care, supposedly based upon the instinct of self-preservation ...””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““The logic of the proposition that the presumption of due care applies only on the issue of contributory negligence speaks for itself. ‘Negligence as it is commonly understood is conduct which creates an undue risk of harm to others. Contributory negligence is conduct which involves an undue risk of harm to the actor himself. Negligence requires a duty, an obligation of conduct to another person. Contributory negligence involves no duty. . ..’ Prosser, supra, at 418. Since the presumption of due care is predicated upon ‘the instinct of self-preservation’ and ‘has for its motive the fear of pain or death’, it is highly relevant to the issue of contributory negligence, which involves the actor’s protection of himself, but has no relevance to the question of primary negligence, which involves a duty to others.” 13 Md. App. at 165-66 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.