39 Cal. 2d 290 - Rodabaugh v. Tekus’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 115 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 118 later decisions — most recently April 1983 · most notably 43 Cal. 2d 60 - Richards v. Stanley (1954), 19 Cal. 3d 530 - Hasson v. Ford Motor Co. (1977)
3 federal appellate · 115 state decisions
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 Girdner v. Union Oil Co. · Neel v. Mannings, Inc. · 38 Cal. 2d 102 - Selinsky v. Olsen · 35 Cal. 2d 16 - Bonebrake v. McCormick · Palmer v. Tschudy
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 118 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘. . . it is not enough to relieve a plaintiff of his own negligence that the defendant may have had a chance to avoid the accident, but defendant must have had the last chance and also had a clear chance to do so by the exercise of ordinary care.’ ” And at page 295, that “ ‘Calculations so nice are unavailing to prove anything except the unity of the whole transaction. The several acts of negligence were too closely welded together in time as well as in quality to be viewed as independent.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““ ‘ Certainly the doctrine of last clear chance never meant a splitting of seconds when emergencies arise. . . . We are not to tear down the facts of a case and rebuild the same so that, by a trimming down and tight-fitting operation, something can be constructed upon which may be fastened the claim of last clear chance. The words mean exactly as they indicate, namely, last clear chance, not possible chance.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The fact that defendant saw that decedent was looking straight ahead while decedent was traveling approximately 500 feet in approaching the intersection does not establish that decedent was in a position of danger this entire distance. Decedent was not in a position of danger until he arrived at a point at which he could no longer stop or slow down in time to avoid a collision.”
1 later decision 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.