Nelson v. Dolan’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 35 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 39 later decisions — most recently May 2020 · most notably Mader v. United States (2011), State v. Louthan (1999)
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 35 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 Sanchez v. Schindler · Shu-Tao Lin v. McDonnell Douglas Corp. · Moore v. Lillebo · Solomon v. Warren · Feldman v. Allegheny Airlines, Inc.
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 39 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““While it is true that in the present case there is no evidence that decedent Nelson said anything prior to his death revealing an awareness of his impending death, the personal representative’s offers of proof nonetheless provide a basis upon which the jury certainly need not, but could, if it wished, find that decedent Nelson apprehended and feared his impending death during the 5 seconds his motorcycle traveled 268 feet locked with [defendant] Dolan’s automobile before he was crushed and thus killed.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Nothing can be allowed on account of mental suffering or bereavement or as a solace on account of such death.... [R]ecovery for loss of services and companionship by a surviving husband or wife can only be sustained where the evidence shows a reasonable probability that such services and companionship afforded the survivor was [sic] of such a character that it would be of advantage to such survivor, and that a disallowance thereof would cause a pecuniary loss to him or her.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““[W]e are persuaded that there exists no sound legal or logical distinction between permitting a decedent’s estate to recover as an element of damages for a decedent’s conscious postinjury pain and suffering and mental anguish and permitting such an estate to recover for the conscious prefatalinjury mental anguish resulting from the apprehension and fear of impending death.””
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.