State v. Murray’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. “[A]n act is a cause of an event if two conditions are satisfied: the event would not have occurred without the act; [and] the act made the event more likely. The first condition is necessary to distinguish the attempted from the completed crime, the second to rule out cases in which, while the event in question would not have occurred but for the act, the act did not create the kind of dangerous condition that would make such events more likely to occur.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Davis v. State · State v. Fox

2. “We have recognized that principles of causation normally associated with civil tort litigation have a proper application in criminal cases. See State v. McFadden, 320 N.W.2d 608, 612-13 (Iowa 1982); State v. Marti, 290 N.W.2d 570, 585-86 (Iowa 1980). Under accepted principles of civil tort law, rules that restrict an actor's responsibility under theories of superseding cause are for the court to apply rather than the jury. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 453 (1965). The governing principle in deciding whether the medical decisions in the present case could be a superseding cause is covered by another section of the Restatement. That section provides: The intervention of a force which is a normal consequence of a situation created by the actor's negligent conduct is not a superseding cause of harm which such conduct has been a substantial factor in bringing about. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 443 (1965) (emphasis added). The interpretive comment to the above section with respect to what is a "normal" consequence states that: The word "normal" is not used in this Section in the sense of what is usual, customary, foreseeable, or to be expected. It denotes rather the antithesis of abnormal, of extraordinary. It means that the court or jury, looking at the matter after the event, and therefore knowing the situation which existed when the new force intervened, does not regard its intervention as so extraordinary as to fall outside of the class of normal events. Id. cmt. b. Judge”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Davis v. State

3. ““The intervention of a force which is a normal consequence of a situation created by the actor’s negligent conduct is not a superseding cause of harm which such conduct has been a substantial factor in bringing about.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Garcia