Clymer v. Tennison’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

19 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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ ‘Where a second actor has or should have become aware of the existence of a potential danger created by the negligence of an original tort-feasor and thereafter, by an independent act of negligence, brings about an accident, the first tort-feasor is relieved of liability, because the condition created by him was merely a circumstance of the accident and not its proximate cause’ ... ‘A prior and remote cause cannot be made the basis of an action if such remote cause did nothing more than furnish the condition or give rise to the occasion by which the injury was made possible, if there intervened between such prior or remote cause and the injury a distinct, successive, unrelated, and efficient cause of the injury, even though the injury would not have occurred but for such condition or occasion. If no danger existed in the condition except because of the independent cause, such condition was not the proximate cause; and, if an independent negligent act or defective condition sets into operation the circumstances which result in injury because of the pri- or defective condition, such subsequent act or condition is the proximate cause.’ ” See also Clymer v. Tennison, 384 S.W.2d 829 (Mo.App.1964) [8-11].”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Christie v. Weber · Esmond v. Bituminous Casualty Corp.

2. ““ ‘Where a second actor [here Union Electric] has or should have become aware of the existence of a potential danger created by the negligence of an original tort-feasor, and thereafter, by an independent act of negligence, brings about an accident, the first tort-feasor is relieved of liability, because the condition created by him was merely a circumstance of the accident and not its proximate cause.’ ” (Our emphasis.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Owens v. Union Electric Co.

3. “it is our view that the occurrence, whether or not caused by defendant’s negligence, was only a remote or predisposing cause, that it merely produced a condition giving opportunity for other causal agencies to act, and that it has no legal causal connection with plaintiffs accident and injury.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Esmond v. Bituminous Casualty Corp.