Sweet v. Ringwelski’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

29 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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Defendants Thompson and Crawford Company, for support of their claim of no negligence on their part, rely on Devine v. Cook, 3 Utah 2d 134 , 279 P.2d 1073 . Involved in that case were two adult motorists. The one who was signalled to proceed had as good or better opportunity than the other to observe the approach of a third vehicle. Whatever validity there may have been, under the facts of that case, to the court's view that the defendant's waving motion should, at most, and as a matter of law, be held to amount only to a manifestation that the waver would wait for the other and not an assurance of safety with regard to other vehicles, such are not the facts here. Plaintiff was a 10-year-old girl. Her vision of the Ringwelski car may have been obstructed by the truck when Thompson waved to her. She testified that she proceeded to the point of impact because she had relied on what she considered directions from an adult and that she would not otherwise have gone on until the traffic had cleared. We do not believe that the court should have determined, as a matter of law, the intended meaning of Thompson's waving action and, more important, the thought that it might reasonably have been anticipated would be conveyed thereby to the 10-year-old girl. These, it seems to us, were questions of fact for the jury. The answers would be determinative of the question of Thompson's negligence.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Armstead v. Holbert