Harding v. Deiss’s Empirical Analysis
2000
Citation profile
31 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently November 2023 · most notably State v. Scarborough (2000), Mercer v. Vanderbilt University, Inc. (2004)
31 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 Federated Mutual Insurance v. Anderson · 404 So. 2d 377 - Whitehead v. Linkous · State v. Soraich · Durphy v. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Mid-Atlantic States, Inc. · Moore v. Imperial Hotels Corp.
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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[Comparative negligence as a defense does not apply where a patient’s pre-treatment behavior merely furnishes the need for care or treatment which later becomes the subject of a malpractice claim.... Acceptance of [the Doctors’] argument (that Candice’s act of riding a horse while having asthma is a negligent act which should be offset against any negligent act by [the Doctors] in her treatment) would lead to an absurd result. Under such a theory, in any case where the patient was responsible for events that led to her hospitalization, the treating physician would not be liable for negligent treatment. We hold that in medical malpractice actions, jury instructions on a patient’s comparative negligence are appropriate only where the patient’s negligent conduct occurs contemporaneous with or subsequent to treatment. We conclude that because Candice’s allegedly negligent acts were pre-treatment conduct, the District Court’s issuance of jury instructions on comparative negligence was an abuse of discretion. [Emphasis added.]”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“No. 17: The Defendants claim that Plaintiff Cutler’s injuries resulted from his own negligence. As to this defense, the Defendants have the burden of proving the following: 1. That Plaintiff Cutler was negligent; and 2. That his negligence was a cause of his injuries. No. 39: Negligence on the part of Plaintiff Cutler does not bar his recovery unless his negligence was greater than the combined negligence of the Defendants. However, the total amount of damages that Plaintiff Cutler would otherwise be entitled to recover will be reduced by the court in proportion to the amount of negligence you attribute to him.”
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.