Walton v. Tull’s Empirical Analysis
1962
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 73 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 81 later decisions — most recently September 2007 · most notably General Motors Corp. v. Lahocki (1980), 169 W. Va. 698 - Sitzes v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc. (1982)
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 73 state decisions — followed in 20 states
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 Hill v. Wilson · Walker v. Kroger Grocery & Baking Co. · Lorch v. Eglin · 77 Ga. App. 463 - Smith v. American Oil Company · Gledhill v. Connecticut 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 81 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We realize that where some tortfeasors are insolvent or unavailable, our conclusion may require a single defendant to bear the entire burden of the verdict. But this possibility of disportionate liability always exists when some of the wrongdoers cannot be made to pay their fair share. At common law, if the plaintiff was free from contributory negligence, he could recover his entire damages from any defendant whose negligence, however slight, was a concurring proximate cause of his injuries. We cannot adopt a narrow construction of our comparative negligence statute in the vain hope of avoiding inequitable situations due to insolvency. Obviously, either the plaintiff or the solvent defendant must suffer, and the loss has traditionally fallen on the wrongdoer.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“"6-801. COMPARATIVE NEGLIGENCE-EFFECT OF CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE.-Contributory negligence shall not bar recovery in an action by any person or his legal representative to recover damages for negligence or gross negligence resulting in death or in injury to person or property, if such negligence was not as great as the negligence or gross negligence of the person against whom recovery is sought, but any damages allowed shall be diminished in the proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to the person recovering."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““The fact of settlement might have had some slight bearing upon Tull’s credibility, but this reason for admitting the proof is outweighed by the arguments for its exclusion. The evidence would have informed the jury that one of the defendants had admitted liability and might also have been used as a basis for an argument that Tull had accepted the amounts of the settlement as fair compensation for his injuries. The Uniform Contribution Among Tortfeasors Act contemplates that each tortfeasor will be credited with amounts paid by other joint tortfeasors, Ark. Stat. 34-1004, but the statute is silent about how the matter is to be handled.””
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.