41 Wash. App. 565 - Brown v. Dahl’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

28 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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “(1) [T]he occurrence producing the injury must be of a kind which ordinarily does not occur in the absence of negligence; (2) the injury is caused by an agency or instrumentality within the exclusive control of the defendant; and (3) the injury-causing occurrence must not be due to any contribution on the part of the plaintiff.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 65 Wash. App. 112 - Murphy v. Montgomery Elevator Co. · 114 Wash. 2d 42 - Howell v. Spokane & Inland Empire Blood Bank

2. “Instruction No. 14 You are instructed that a physician employed to treat or administer to a patient does not and cannot insure or in any sense guarantee a satisfactory result, nor is the physician responsible for unsatisfactory results of his treatment or care unless his own lack of professional knowledge and skill or his negligent failure to exercise it is the proximate cause of such result. The fact in a particular case that complications result is not in itself any evidence that the treatment was improper or that the physician failed to exercise the professional knowledge and skill necessary to proper professional practice, nor is it any evidence that the doctor failed to exercise his skill with reasonable care. Instruction No. 15 A physician is not liable for an honest error of judgment if, in arriving at that judgment, the physician exercised reasonable care and skill within the standard of care for a reasonably prudent practitioner in the state of Washington. Instruction No. 16 A physician or surgeon is not to be judged in the light of any after acquired knowledge in relation to the case, and the question of whether or not he exercised reasonable care and skill as defined in these instructions is to be determined by reference to what is known in relation to the case at the time of treatment or examination, and must be determined by reference to the pertinent facts then in existence of which he knew, or in the exercise of ordinary care should have known.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 46 Wash. App. 480 - Vasquez v. Markin

3. “. That is, if the reasonable person in the patient's position would attach significance to a risk in deciding treatment, the risk is material. The duty to disclose similarly attaches to recognized possible alternative forms of treatment and to the anticipated results of the treatment proposed and administered. Brown, 41 Wash.App. at 570 , 705 P.2d 781 (citations omitted) (emphasis added); Adams v. Richland Clinic, Inc., 37 Wash.App. 650, 656 , 681 P.2d 1305 (1984) (informed consent doctrine does not place upon the physician a duty to explain all possible risks, but only those of a serious nature; the guide for disclosure is the test of materiality, which is an objective one, but incorporates the underlying concept of "patient sovereignty”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Backlund v. University of Washington