Beatty v. Davis’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
32 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently October 2025 · most notably Preston v. Keith (1991), Long v. Hacker (1994)
32 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 Maloney v. Kaminski · Erickson v. Monarch Industries, Inc. · Kenyon v. Larsen · Tetherow v. Wolfe · Security Insurance v. Omaha Coca-Cola Bottling 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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Under the rescue doctrine it is not contributory negligence for a plaintiff to expose himself to danger in a reasonable effort to save a third person or the property of a third person from harm. The extent of the risk which the volunteer is justified in assuming under the circumstances increases in proportion to the imminence of the danger and the value to be realized from meeting the danger and attempting to remove or eliminate the hazard; i.e., the less the danger to the third party, the less the risk the volunteer is justified in taking.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur is that where the instrumentality causing the injury is shown to be under the defendant’s exclusive control and management and the accident is one that in the ordinary course of things does not occur if those who have its management or control use proper care, reasonable evidence is afforded, in the absence of an explanation by the defendant, that the accident arose from want of proper care.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“the court reasoned that while the doctrine [res ipsa loquitur] is unavailable where the precise cause is shown, the plaintiff does not lose the benefit of the doctrine by introducing evidence of specific acts of negligence, where the evidence leaves the cause of the accident in doubt or does not clearly show the cause.”
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.