DiDonato v. Wortman’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 2 district · 66 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 90 later decisions — most recently February 2026 · most notably Rowan County Board of Education v. United States Gypsum Co. (1992), 87 N.C. App. 512 - Robinson v. Seaboard System RR, Inc. (1987)
5 federal appellate · 2 district · 66 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Roe v. Wade · Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara Cty. · Van Beeck v. Sabine Towing Co. · Jackson v. Bumgardner · State v. Gardner
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 90 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[d]amages available under [G.S. § 28A-18-2] are not automatic; they are what the legislature will permit the beneficiaries to recover provided those damages can be proved. The law disfavors — and in fact prohibits — recovery for damages based on sheer speculation. Damages must be proved to a reasonable level of certainty, and may not be based on pure conjecture.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[L]ost income damages normally available under N.C.G.S. § 28A-18-2(b)(4)a. cannot be recovered in an action for the wrongful death of a stillborn child. . . . We also hold that damages normally recovered under N.C.G.S. § 28A-18-2(b)(4)b. & c. — loss of services, companionship, advice and the like — will not be available in an action for the wrongful death of a viable fetus. The reasons are the same as in the case of pecuniary loss. When a child is stillborn we simply cannot know anything about its personality and other traits relevant to what kind of companion it might have been and what kind of services it might have provided. An award of damages covering these kinds of losses would necessarily be based on speculation rather than reason.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[ w]e must be leery, however, of inferring legislative approval of appellate court decisions from what is really legislative silence. “Legislative inaction has been called a ‘weak reed upon which to lean’ and a ‘poor beacon to follow’ in construing a statute.” 2A N. Singer, Sutherland Statutory Construction 407 (1984). “[It is] impossible to assert with any degree of assurance that [legislative inaction] represents (1) approval of the status quo, as opposed to (2) inability to agree upon how to alter the status quo, (3) unawareness of the status quo, (4) indifference to the status quo, or even (5) political cowardice.””
3 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.