Preston v. Keith’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
2 district · 121 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 126 later decisions — most recently July 2024 · most notably Kelley v. Bonney (1992), Kilduff v. Adams, Inc. (1991)
2 district · 121 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 United Families of America v. Kendrick · United Families of America v. Kendrick · Textile Workers Union v. Darlington Manufacturing Co. · Coburn v. Lenox Homes, Inc. · Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Canaan Oil Co.
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 126 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To claim successfully that the plaintiff failed to mitigate damages, the defendant must show that the injured party failed to take reasonable action to lessen the damages; that the damages were in fact enhanced by such failure; and that the damages which could have been avoided can be measured with reasonable certainty.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“In Morro v. Brockett , [ 109 Conn. 87 , 145 A. 659 (1929), the Supreme Court] discussed the relationship between mitigation of damages and proximate cause. `The burden is on the plaintiff to establish that the injuries for which he seeks damages were the proximate result of the negligence of the defendant, but when a prima facie case had been made out, as in this instance, it becomes incumbent upon the defendant if he seeks to exonerate himself from responsibility for a portion of the consequences to show that some of these had their proximate cause in the failure of the plaintiff to act in good faith in an attempt to promote recovery and avoid aggravation of the initial injury.' Id. , 93-94. Morro established that the theoretical foundation for the plaintiff's duty to mitigate damages is that the defendant's negligence is not the proximate, or legal, cause of any damages that could have been avoided had the plaintiff taken reasonable steps to promote recovery and avoid aggravating the original injury.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“A defendant claiming that the plaintiff has failed to mitigate damages seeks to be benefitted by a particular matter of fact, and he should, therefore, prove the matter alleged by him. The rule requires him to prove an affirmative fact, whereas the opposite rule would call upon the plaintiff to prove a negative, and therefore the proof should come from the defendant. He is the wrongdoer, and presumptions between him and the person wronged should be made in favor of the latter. For this reason, therefore, the onus must in all such cases be upon the defendant. 1 T. Sedgwick, Damages (9th Ed. 1912) 227, p. 448.”
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.