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6 Wash. 2d 251

107 P.2d 348

Erickson v. Barnes

Washington Supreme Court

Decided November 20, 1940

Washington Supreme Court · decided 1940-11-20

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1940-11-20

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently March 1978

3 federal appellate · 5 state decisions

501940195019601970decided

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.

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Main, J.

¶1 (dissenting) — I think the instruction defining the presumption of due care on the part of the deceased was not only erroneous, but prejudicial. It was erroneous in that it failed to tell the jury that the presumption of due care could not be overcome by interested testimony. It was prejudicial in that it was upon a vital issue in the case. I think the presumption was still in the case at the time it was submitted to the jury, and the appellant was entitled at that time to a proper instruction upon it. Had the jury been instructed that the presumption could be overcome only by disinterested testimony, the verdict might well have been for plaintiff. For, in my opinion, the physical facts were not in themselves sufficient to overcome it.

¶2 Blake, C. J., and Millard, J., concur with Main, J.

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