MacKey v. Spradlin’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 15 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[T]he care which the actor is required to exercise to avoid being negligent ... is that which he, as a reasonable man, should recognize as necessary to prevent the act from creating an unreasonable risk of harm to another.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Byler v. Scripto-Tokai Corporation · Schwartz v. Helms Bakery Limited

2. ““As we have already pointed out, to break the chain of proximate causal connection an intervening action must be one that is not reasonably foreseeable by the antecedently negligent actor who is thereby relieved of responsibility. Whatever reservations we may have with respect to the soundness of Winders’ Adm’r v. Henry Bickel Co., supra, certainly it is distinguishable in degree. Perhaps Bickel should have foreseen that children might cross the street and get run over in the process of going around his obstruction, but at least he did not solicit them. In this case the children were, in substance, consciously and directly invited into an area of danger, and it does not seem unreasonable to expect of the inviters a proportionately higher degree of foresight.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Garza v. Perez