33 Cal. 2d 80 - Summers v. Tice’s Empirical Analysis
1948
Citation profile
131 federal appellate · 32 district · 290 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 589 later decisions (8 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2020 · most notably Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins (1989), Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights, Ltd. (2007)
131 federal appellate · 32 district · 290 state decisions — followed in 35 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 25 Cal. 2d 486 - Ybarra v. Spangard · Anthony v. Hobbie · Mosley v. Arden Farms Co. · 29 Cal. 2d 79 - Colonial Insurance v. Industrial Accident Commision · People v. Gold Run Ditch & Mining Co.
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 589 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"Dean Wigmore has this to say: 'When two or more persons by their acts are possibly the sole cause of a harm, or when two or more acts of the same person are possibly the sole cause, and the plaintiff has introduced evidence that one of the two persons, or one of the same *Page 1019 person's two acts, is culpable, then the defendant has the burden of proving that the other person, or his other act, was the sole cause of the harm. (b) * * * The real reason for the rule that each joint tortfeasor is responsible for the whole damage is the practical unfairness of denying the injured person redress simply because he cannot prove how much damage each did, when it is certain that between them they did all. . . . Since, then, the difficulty of proof is the reason, the rule should apply whenever the harm has plural causes, and not merely when they acted in conscious concert. * * *' (Wigmore, Select Cases on the Law of Torts, sec. 153.) Similarly Professor Carpenter has said: '[Suppose] the case where A and B independently shoot at C and but one bullet touches C's body. In such case, such proof as is ordinarily required that either A or B shot C, of course fails. It is suggested that there should be a relaxation of the proof required of the plaintiff * * * where the injury occurs as the result of one where more than one independent force is operating, and it is impossible to determine that the force set in operation by defendant did not in fact constitute a cause of the damage, and wh”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage“[i]f defendants are independent tort feasors and thus each liable for the damage caused by him alone, and, at least, where the matter of apportionment is incapable of proof, the innocent wronged party should not be deprived of his right to redress.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“In the present case, the parties were engaged in hunting jointly, and both fired across a public highway, which was a negligent act. We think that they were jointly engaged in the unlawful enterprise of shooting at birds flying over the highway; that they were in pursuit of a common purpose; that each did an unlawful act, in the pursuit thereof; and that each is liable for the resulting injury to the boy, although no one can say definitely who actually shot him. To hold otherwise would be to exonerate both from liability, although each was negligent, and the injury resulted from such negligence.”
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.