48 Va. App. 719 - O'Connell v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Given this evidence, an average person should or would have foreseen the inherent risk that a driver could lose control during the race, posing a danger of serious injury to himself and others. [O’Connell] set this course of events in motion and did nothing to prevent such a risk. Thus, any negligence [the other driver] may have committed was not an independent, intervening cause of the accident.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 66 Va. App. 219 - Derek Justice Doggett v. Commonwealth of Virginia

2. “This familiar standard gives full play to the responsibility of the trier of fact fairly to resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 49 Va. App. 389 - Neel v. Commonwealth

3. “was put into operation by [appellant's] negligent act[]”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 54 Va. App. 577 - Noakes v. Commonwealth