McMillan v. Thompson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

27 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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The general rules applicable to such a situation were outlined in Newman v. Steuernagel, 132 Cal. App. 417 [ 22 P. (2d) 780 ], as follows: “ Tt is the general rule that an original act of negligence is not a proximate cause of an injury when the same directly results from an intervening act of another party which was one not to be reasonably anticipated by the first party as reasonably likely to occur and follow through and from his own act. . . . “ Tn Hale v. Pacific Tel. & Tel. Co., 42 Cal. App. 55 , [ 183 Pac. 280, 281 ], the court said: “The rule, as we understand it, applicable to such cases, is that where the original negligence of a defendant is followed by an independent act of a third person which results in a direct injury to a plaintiff, the negligence of such defendant may, nevertheless, constitute the proximate cause thereof if, in the ordinary and natural course of events, the defendant should have known the intervening act was likely to happen; but if the intervening act constituting the immediate cause of the injury was one which it was not incumbent upon the defendant to have anticipated as reasonably likely to happen, then, since the chain of causation is broken, he owes no duty to the plaintiff to anticipate such further acts, and the original negligence cannot be said to be the proximate cause of the final injury.” (Italics ours.)’ . . . “If it be assumed that the driver of the truck and trailer was negligent in stopping where he did, we think it must be ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Bracy v. Lund