145 W. Va. 408 - Spurlin v. Nardo’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 90 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 98 later decisions — most recently September 2021 · most notably 148 W. Va. 380 - Hatten v. Mason Realty Company (1964), 173 W. Va. 43 - State v. Kopa (1983)
8 federal appellate · 90 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 138 W. Va. 639 - Matthews v. Cumberland & Allegheny Gas Co. · 133 W. Va. 569 - Davis v. Pugh · 130 W. Va. 466 - Wright v. Valan · 139 W. Va. 711 - Prettyman v. Hopkins Motor Co. · 134 W. Va. 121 - Moore v. Skyline Cab, Inc.
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 98 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“essence of contributory negligence is carelessness; of assumption of risk, venturousness.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage““ ‘A prima facie case of actionable negligence is that state of facts which will support a jury finding that the defendant was guilty of negligence which was the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries, that is, it is a case that has proceeded upon sufficient proof to the stage where it must be submitted to a jury and not decided against the plaintiff as a matter of law.’ Pt. 6, syllabus, Morris v. City of Wheeling, 140 W.Va. 78 , [ 82 S.E.2d 536 (1954)].””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““A person in a sudden emergency not created in whole or in part by his own negligence, who acts according to his best judgment or who, because of insufficient time to form a judgment, fails to act in the most judicious manner, is not guilty of actionable negligence if he exercises the care which would be exercised by a reasonably prudent person in like circumstances.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.