262 Pa. Super. 397 - Sullivan v. Wolson’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently June 2014
24 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 Evans v. Philadelphia Transportation Co. · Unangst v. Whitehouse · 226 Pa. Super. 574 - Wisniewski v. GREAT A. & P. TEA. CO. · Fugagli v. Camasi · TAYLOR v. Fardink
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Now, the defendant Petka claims as his defense a doctrine known in the law as the Doctrine of Sudden Emergency; that is he was confronted with the situation of the first accident so suddenly that he reacted in the best way he could, not necessarily using normal judgment, and so ran over the deceased Joseph Potenburg. Now, it is the contention, and it is urged by the defendant Petka, that due to the negligent conduct of either the defendant Varner or the deceased plaintiff Joseph Potenburg, or both, he was faced at the time of the accident with a sudden emergency not brought about by any conduct of his own. This rule of Sudden Emergency stated in its best form is that where one finds himself in a position of danger which was not the result of his own negligence, he will not be held responsible if he makes a mistake of judgment in extricating himself from the dangerous situation in which he finds himself. One confronted by a sudden perilous situation not created by some fault of his own, is not required to exercise the highest or even the ordinary degree of judgment. One may be legally blameless in spite of an error in judgment where another has placed him in a situation where it would be unreasonable to hold him to the exercise of cool and correct judgment. The defendant Petka seeks to have you apply this principle to this case because of the possibility that you might conclude that he should have acted differently when he came to the accident scene or came upon it. He contend”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“"Now the Defendant Petka claims as his defense a doctrine known in the law as the doctrine of Sudden Emergency; that is, he was confronted with a situation of the first accident so suddenly that he reacted to the situation the best way he could, not necessarily using normal judgment, and so ran over the Deceased, Joseph Potenburg. Now there is contention and it is urged by the Defendant, Petka, that due to the negligent conduct of either the Defendant Varner, or the Deceased Plaintiff, Joseph Potenburg, or both, he was faced at the time of the accident with a very sudden emergency not brought about by any conduct of his own . . . ."”
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.