39 Wash. 2d 451 - Reynolds v. Donoho’s Empirical Analysis
1951
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 25 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently July 2008 · most notably 12 Wash. App. 500 - Ryan v. Westgard (1975), 103 Wash. 2d 431 - In Re the Estate of Bergau (1985)
3 federal appellate · 25 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 State v. Larose · Carlson v. P. F. Collier & Son Corp. · Hill v. Great Northern Life Insurance · Segerstrom v. Lawrence · Tomasko v. Raucci
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Like the plea of nolo contendere (Honaker v. Howe, [19 Grat. 50, 60 Va. 50 ]) or the absence of the accused from his home during the period immediately following the accident (Tomasko v. Raucci, [ 113 Conn. 274 , 155 A. 64, 651 ]), the forfeiture of bail by the appellant was an incident unique in itself. Some analogies may be drawn favoring admissibility. However, the bail forfeiture here involved falls in the category of one of those tubs that must stand on its own bottom. This is particularly true in an automobile accident criminal action. It is common knowledge that, upon the receipt of a traffic ticket, the average motorist pays and then forfeits his bail; the action is thus concluded. It cannot be said that such an act is a general admission of responsibility. Often, it is but a convenient method of concluding the criminal action, convenient both to the person charged and to the administrators of traffic law enforcement. It is our opinion that the evidence relating to the appellant’s “forfeiture of bail” was not admissible.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“A plea of guilty to a charge of crime is in the nature of an admission. It is an admission of wrong on the part of a defendant so pleading. The jury are therefore entitled to consider it as it considers any other admission; they must view it in connection with the surrounding circumstances, and give it such weight as in their judgment the circumstances warrant. In this instance, the plea was evidence on the general issue, and it would have been error on the part of the court to restrict it as applicable solely to the credibility of the witness.”
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.