Yarborough v. Berner’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 68 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 77 later decisions — most recently March 2016 · most notably Thomas v. Oldham (1995), Jackson v. Fontaine's Clinics, Inc. (1973)
6 federal appellate · 68 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 Benoit v. Wilson · Hopson v. Gulf Oil Corp. · Dallas Railway & Terminal Co. v. Bailey · Wheeler v. Glazer · Dallas Railway & Terminal Co. v. Bailey
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 77 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“`unavoidable accident' means an accident that is not proximately caused by the negligence of any party to it.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage““The only legitimate purpose to be served in submitting unavoidable accident is to call the matter to the attention of the jury, so that it will not be overlooked, and so that the jury will understand that they do not necessarily have to find that one or the other parties to the suit was to blame for the occurrence complained of. This purpose is fully accomplished when the jury is told that the occurrence in question was an unavoidable accident if it happened without the negligence of either of the parties to the suit.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Reinhart v. Young · Lemos v. Montez“An unavoidable accident instruction is proper only when there is evidence that the event was proximately caused by a nonhuman condition and not by the negligence of any party to the event... .The instruction is ordinarily given in cases involving environmental conditions such as fog, snow, sleet, wet or slick pavement, or obstruction of view. ...The instruction may also be proper when there is evidence indicating that a very young child, legally incapable of negligence, was the only human cause of the accident. When there is no evidence that the accident was caused by some such peculiar circumstance, submission of the instruction is generally improper. (Emphasis added).”
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.