Strickland v. Roberts’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “There was another basis for entry of the summary judgment, although it was not articulated by the trial court. One of the exceptions to the merger of contributory negligence and assumption of the risk set out in Blackburn v. Dorta, 348 So.2d 287 (Fla.1977) is contact sports. Normally, water-skiing would not be considered a contact sport. The uncontro-verted evidence in the instant case, however, is that Strickland was injured while engaged in an aberrant form of the sport: swinging in as close as possible to a stationary dock for the purpose of spraying water on sunbathers. He had frequently engaged in this “sport” — indeed, he had done so on the immediate preceding turn around the lake before his own misjudgment carried him into a comer piling of the dock. There is absolutely no evidence that the manner in which the boat was operated caused the mishap, other than the fact that it furnished Strickland the momentum to play his game. The risk of hitting a dock inheres in the sport of narrowly missing it. Strickland, having assumed the risk of his game, played it once too often and lost.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 526 So. 2d 1003 - Mazzeo v. City of Sebastian