Richardson v. Ham’s Empirical Analysis
1955
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 182 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 192 later decisions — most recently January 2017 · most notably Dillon v. Legg (1968), Palma v. U.S. Industrial Fasteners, Inc. (1984)
6 federal appellate · 182 state decisions — followed in 11 states
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 43 Cal. 2d 60 - Richards v. Stanley · Zibbell v. Southern Pacific Co. · Brooks v. Metropolitan Life Insurance · Mosley v. Arden Farms Co. · Mazzotta v. Los Angeles Railway Corp.
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 192 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[i]f the realizable likelihood that a third person may act in a particular manner is the hazard or one of the hazards which makes [the] actor negligent, such an act whether innocent, negligent, intentionally tortious or criminal does not prevent the actor from being liable for harm caused thereby.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“"The extreme danger created by a bulldozer in uncontrolled motion and the foreseeable risk of intermeddling fully justify imposing a duty on the owner to exercise reasonable care to protect third parties from injuries arising from its operation by inter meddlers. (See Jensen v. Minard, ante, [44 Cal.2d] pp. 325, 327, 328 [ 282 P.2d 7 ]; Warner v. Santa Catalina Island Co., ante, [44 Cal.2d] pp. 310, 317 [ 282 P.2d 12 ], and cases cited.) “In the absence of an effective lock the bulldozer engine could be started by pushing in a lever and stepping on the starter. Moreover, the engine could be started with, the bulldozer in gear, and if so started, the bulldozer would commence to move immediately. Although this risk could be avoided by the use of a simple but effective lock, there is evidence that no such lock was used. Accordingly, there is substantial evidence that defendants did not exercise reasonable care to prevent intermeddlers from setting their bulldozer in motion. “It is contended, however, that even if defendants were under a duty to protect plaintiffs from injuries from operation of the bulldozer caused by ordinary intermeddlers, they were not under a duty to protect plaintiffs from intermeddlers who deliberately undertook to operate the bulldozer, or, in other words, that the intentional misconduct of the young men constituted a superseding cause of plaintiffs’ injuries. (See Rest. Torts, § 448.) It is settled, however, that ‘If the realizable likelihood that a thir”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[a]utomobiles do not arouse curiosity, and ordinarily the only appreciable risk that they will be set in motion if they are left unattended arises from the possibility of their being stolen,”
2 later decisions 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.