Lavatai v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “I feel compelled, however, to comment about the State's tactics in this case. The State had numerous opportunities to alert Mr. Lavatai to the problem with his governmental claim, including: in the State risk manager's initial response; in its answer to his civil complaint; and in its responses to his specific interrogatories. In what appears to be a calculated effort to delay Mr. Lavatai's recognition of his technical error until after it was too late to correct it, the State obscured its position on the validity of his governmental claim. Granted, Mr. Lavatai does not direct us to authority showing the State's risk manager had an affirmative obligation to alert him about the error when she responded, in the first instance, to his governmental claim. Similarly, the question of whether the State's answer to his complaint, together with the affirmative defense alleging the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction, was sufficiently definite is, perhaps, open to argument. See eg., Harris v. Grizzle, 599 P.2d 580, 583 (Wyo.1979); Romero v. Schulze, 974 P.2d 959, 964 (Wy.1999). [[Image here]] In response to Mr. Lavatai's equitable estoppel arguments, the State claims it had no duty to provide legal advice to an opponent and, absent an affirmative misrepresentation or concealment of facts of which it had superior knowledge, it did nothing wrong. It is true that the State was not obligated to provide legal advice to Mr. Lavatai, but it did have a legal duty to respond to hi”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Anita Harmon, as an Individual and as Personal Representative of the Estate of Euella Potter