Carlson v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 49 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 53 later decisions — most recently August 2018 · most notably Breck v. Ulmer (1987), Rockstad v. Erikson (2005)
3 federal appellate · 49 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 South Dakota v. Nebraska · Moore v. State · State v. Abbott · Ransom v. Haner · Stordahl v. Government Employees Insurance Co.
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 53 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[D]ecisions that rise to the level of planning or policy-making are considered discretionary acts which do not give rise to tort liability, while decisions that are merely operational are not considered discretionary acts and, therefore, do not give rise to immunity.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Turning then to the specific circumstances of this case, the lower court found the state and its employees negligent in failing to exercise reasonable care to maintain the curve where the accident occurred. We have concluded that the trial court was correct in holding that such maintenance was not within the discretionary function exception. Although it is true, as the state contends, that the district engineer’s decision as to how many men and how much equipment were necessary to maintain this particular stretch of highway involved a certain amount of planning and discretion, it is not the kind of broad policy decision at which the exception, as interpreted by the above authorities, is aimed. Once the initial policy determination is made to maintain the highway through the winter by salting, standing and plowing it, the individual district engineer’s decisions as to how that decision should be carried out in terms of men and machinery is made at the operations level; it merely implements the basic policy decision. Once the basic decision to maintain the highway in a safe condition throughout the winter is reached, the state should not be given discretion to do so negligently. The decisions at issue in this case simply do not rise to the level of governmental policy decisions calling for judicial restraint. Under these circumstances the discretionary function exception has no proper application.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[a] landowner or owner of other property must act as a reasonable person in maintaining his property in a reasonably safe condition in view of all circumstances including the likelihood of the injury to others, the seriousness of the injury, and the burden on respective parties of avoiding the risk.”
1 later decision 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.