Riser v. Herr’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In his instructions to the jury upon this issue, the trial court in paragraphs six and eight thereof said among other things that vehicles approaching an intersection from the right have the right of way over those approaching it from the left and that it was the duty of a driver approaching an intersection to operate his automobile in such a manner ‘as to be in a position to accord any other vehicle from a direction favored under the law the right of way to enter and cross the intersection ahead * * *.’ The defendant contends that these instructions are inapplicable to the present case, because the undisputed evidence shows that her truck reached the intersection before the plaintiff’s automobile arrived there and for this reason the court also erred in failing and refusing to instruct the jury that regardless of the directions from which the two cars approached the intersection, the first one entering it had the right of way. In her argument the defendant says that since her claim to the right of way at the intersection was such a substantial part of her defense and such an important issue in the cause, the court’s error amounted to a failure to instruct upon the issues of the cause and to submit her theory of defense to the jury, thus denying her a substantial right. With this contention we must agree. An examination of the record reveals that the point under discussion was one of the issues, if not the principal one joined both by the pleadings and the evidence. While we”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Lindemann v. Randolph

2. ““Upon the foregoing considerations, we conclude that the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury as to which of the two vehicles had the right of way, if they found that one of them entered the intersection before the other. ... It is the duty of the court without a request and upon its own initiative to instruct the jury upon all of the vital factors of the tenable legal theories of both litigants concerning the issues of fact.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Fisher v. Sturgeon