39 Cal. App. 2d 698 - Key v. Caldwell’s Empirical Analysis
1940
Citation profile
2 district · 22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently February 1989
2 district · 22 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 Davis v. Kerr · The Weinberg Co. v. Bixby · Bee v. Cooper
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Why was a foreign substance left in the parts, which the operating surgeon should have removed ? It was for him to acquit himself of the negligence with respect to it. The sponge escaped his observation. Why? Was it so hidden and concealed that reasonable care on his part would not have disclosed it, or were conditions such that, in his professional judgment, further exploration by him for sponges would have endangered the safety of the patient? In a word, did he do all that reasonable care and skill would require ? Except as one or the other of these questions can be answered affirmatively from the evidence, the law will presume to the contrary, and attribute the unfortunate consequences to his contributing negligence.””
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.