Willette v. Statler Tissue Corp.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

22 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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ ‘ . . . full liability upon the carrier covering the risk at the time of the most re cent injury that bears a causal relation to the disability. “ ‘If the second injury takes the form merely of a recurrence of the first, and if the second incident does not contribute even slightly to the causation of the disabling condition, the insurer on the risk at the time of the original injury remains liable for the second . . “ ‘On the other hand, if the second incident contributes independently to the injury, the second insurer is solely liable, even if the injury would have been much less severe in the absence of the prior condition, and even if the prior injury contributed to the major part of the final condition.’ ” Kidder, supra, at 731, n. 1, citing 3 Larson, Workmen’s Compensation Law, § 95.12, pp. 508.130-508.133. In Kidder, supra, we determined that we would not apply the rule in a case where two successive injuries, both temporarily disabling, occurring in the course of and arising out of two successive employments, combined to produce a single, indivisible disabling injury. In those circumstances, we deemed it appropriate to apportion the damages between the two carriers in accordance with their insured’s responsibility for those damages rather than to saddle the carrier covering the risk at the time of the second accident with full liability. Since the instant case involves a single employer and a single work-related injury, we do not see any occasion for the application ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Wadleigh v. Higgins