Johnson v. Davidson Ladders, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
2005
Citation profile
3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently March 2010
3 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 Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. · Celotex Corporation v. Catrett H · Lavespere v. Niagara Machine & Tool Works, Inc. · Topalian v. Ehrman · Ferguson v. National Broadcasting Co.
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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[H]er own expert witness testified that the mats had a short life expectancy, were likely to fail and result in accidents, and were very costly. These characteristics impair the "utility, usefulness, practicality or desirability of the product to users or consumers." Miss. Code Ann. § 11-1-63 (f). Absent evidence that the new design proved even more unreliable, it cannot be argued that the older design alternative that was abandoned in part because of the frequency of accidents that it caused would by a "reasonable probability" have prevented the same kind of accident here. See McIntosh, Products Liability, Part II, at 301-302. The only evidence indicates that the mat system was the less efficient system that Stanley had replaced with the type of system used at the Best Western Seaway motel.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Williams v. Bennett“[T]he plaintiffs failed to adduce any evidence to demonstrate the extent of the risk that the alternative design would have avoided or how the alternative design would have affected its utility. Although the plaintiffs offered up numerous claims reports pertaining to other accidents involving the 527-06 ladder, they failed to show that the incidents were similar to Ms. Johnson's accident. More importantly, they offered no evidence relative to the effectiveness of the alternative design in reducing the severity or frequency of accidents.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Williams v. Bennett“[Plaintiff's] proof of the risk that might have been avoided by the alternative design and of the burden that switching to the alternative design would have entailed was, to say the least, incomplete. Faced with this meager evidence, no reasonable trier of fact could have concluded that the balance of those two factors tipped in favor of the risk avoided. One cannot balance an indeterminate weight.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Williams v. Bennett
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.