Patterson v. Kuntz’s Empirical Analysis
1946
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 23 later decisions — most recently June 2017
22 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 Koons v. Rook · Paxton v. Boyer · Bacas v. Laswell · Courvoisier v. Raymond · Crabtree v. Dawson
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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Of course, resort to the use of a dangerous weapon in order to repel a supposed attack upon a defendant's person or that of persons to whom he owes a duty to protect cannot be countenanced as justifiable save in exceptional cases where the actor's fear of the danger is not only genuine but is founded on facts which would be likely to produce similar emotions in men of reasonable prudence.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“"If the evidence submitted by the defendant and his witnesses is sufficient to warrant a finding that he, as a reasonably prudent man, had good cause to believe that the intruder entered the property with an intent to do bodily harm to his wife or his daughter, then it matters not whether plaintiff's son trespassed on the premises for the purpose of relieving himself or to `peep' or to commit acts of violence. It is well settled, even in the common law states, that a defendant using force under a reasonable apprehension of danger is not civilly liable to one whom he has cause to believe is his assailant even though it subsequently appears that he is mistaken. In 6 C.J.S. § 18, under the title `Assault and Battery,' it is stated at page 812: "`Where a man reasonably expects an attack from A, and in the exercise of due care mistakes B for A, and strikes B, he is, nevertheless, excused on the ground of self-defense and apparent necessity.' "The following cases are cited in support of the text: Courvoisier v. Raymond, 23 Colo. 113 , 47 P. 284 ; Paxton v. Boyer, 67 Ill. 132 , 16 Am. Rep. 615 ; Crabtree v. Dawson, 119 Ky. 148 , 83 S.W. 557 , 67 L.R.A. 565 , 115 Am.St.Rep. 243 and Rook v. Koons, Tex.Civ.App., 289 S.W. 1077 ; Id., Tex. Com.App., 295 S.W. 592 . See also Prosser on Torts, Section 17, pages 114 and 115. "Hence, as aforesaid, it is unimportant that we determine the intent of Patterson although it is apparent, from a consideration of all of the evidence in the case, that ”
2 later decisions 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.