Luster v. Luster’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 federal appellate · 44 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 51 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is difficult to see how the fact, if it be a fact, that the defendant carried liability insurance covering this accident can impose a liability where none would otherwise exist. Aside from a certain incongruity in attempting to bend general rules of liability so that their application to particular instances shall depend upon the existence or absence of insurance against such liability, it would seem that insurance does not remove the fundamental objections to such an action as this. The proceeding is still in theory an adversary one, and for various reasons it may be such in fact. If it is not, then it becomes peculiarly liable to abuse through collusion. Other courts have said that the fact that the defendant parent is insured does not change the rule.” Luster v. Luster, supra, at 483 , 13 N.E.2d at 440 and cases cited.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. McKinney v. McKinney · Downs v. Poulin

2. ““. . . Probably it should be conceded at the outset that pure logic interposes no obstacle to such an action. But from the practical viewpoint of sound public policy serious objections present themselves immediately and forcibly. Such actions, at least when not collusive, would almost inevitably tend to the destruction of the peace and unity of family life and to the impairment of parental authority and discipline. In the continued intimate contact between parent and child through the long years of the child’s minority many occasions must arise out of which claims, real or specious, could be made that the parent had been negligent in some matter of commission or omission to the injury of the child. During the minority of the child such claims, even if valid, commonly could be investigated and prosecuted only through the intervention of outsiders whose intrusions, not always disinterested, into the intimacies of family life would seek excuse and justification on the ground that perhaps a cause of action -might be unearthed for the benefit of' the child. The action now before us was brought through a second cousin of the plaintiff who was appointed his guardian a few weeks after the accident. An equally repellant -alternative would be the saving up of such claims to be prosecuted by the child himself after reaching his majority, when the claims may have become stale and the witnesses no longer available. We are unable to accept the theory that the family as the ultimate social ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Guerra v. Ortiz