Sauer v. Winkler’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

21 state decisions

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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “we should not be hypertechnical in requiring the use of particular words or phrases, or in requiring any particular arrangement or form of language. Rather, we should determine whether average laymen have been sufficiently apprised of the necessary facts to be found by them and of the correct legal conclusions which follow.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Heppner v. Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Co. · Douglas v. Whitledge

2. ““The question then is whether instructions A and B, respectively, did in fact ignore plaintiff’s hypothesized recovery on her respective primary and humanitarian negligence submission. “Defendant. did make some attempt to limit instruction A to plaintiff’s primary negligence submission and to limit instruction B to plaintiff’s humanitarian submission. A, after hypothesizing a finding of deceased’s contributory negligence, closes: ‘then the court instructs you that the plaintiff, Eugenie B. Sauer, cannot recover under instruction No. 1, and your verdict will be in favor of the defendant, Robert Wink-ler.’ Then follows the direction that such is the law irrespective of a finding of negligence on the part of defendant. “Now, it was correct to tell the jury that upon a finding by them that deceased was contributorily negligent, plaintiff could not recover under instruction No. 1. But it was not technically correct to follow that statement with the further direction: ‘and your verdict will be in favor of the defendant, Robert Winkler.’ This, because the jury was to return only one verdict as to the entire case and the fact that plaintiff could not recover under instruction 1 would not prevent plaintiff’s recovery under instruction 2, and thus a finding that deceased was contributorily negligent would not alone justify a verdict for defendant. The instruction either should have eliminated the direction of a verdict for defendant, or should have included a qualifying phrase such as ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Staat v. St. Louis Public Service Co.