Downs v. Scott’s Empirical Analysis
1963
Citation profile
18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently December 2003
18 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 180 Pa. Super. 427 - Cohen v. Sykes · Ondick v. Ondick · 178 Pa. Super. 13 - Rennekamp Supply Co. v. Valicenti
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.
“c. Due care and causation. The factors determining whether an injured person has used care to avert the consequences of a tort are in general the same as those that determine whether a person has been guilty of negligent conduct____ He is required to exercise no more than reasonable judgment or fortitude; and, if different courses of action are open to him he is not required, as a condition to obtaining full damages, to choose the course that events later show to have been the best. He is not barred from full recovery by the fact that it would have been reasonable for him to make expenditures or subject himself to pain or risk; it is only when he is unreasonable in refusing or failing to take action to prevent further loss that his damages are curtailed. d. Pain — Danger. A person injured by another frequently has great latitude in his selection of means to avoid further harm. Thus in an effort to save a limb, he may employ a competent surgeon for an operation that is both expensive and dangerous to life, and if the operation is unsuccessful, the tortfeasor will be required to pay both for the surgeon’s services and for the harm caused by the treatment. On the other hand, it is frequently reasonable for a person threatened by further harm from a tortious act to refuse to subject himself to pain or to a danger of a different kind, which it would be necessary to undergo if the further harm is to be averted. Thus it may not be unreasonable for a person whose leg has been imprope”
1 later decision 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.