Greenwood v. Mitchell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 11 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Defendant claims plaintiff was at fault for failing to mitigate her damages by not exercising ordinary care to obtain reasonable medical treatment. Plaintiff has a duty to exercise ordinary care to reduce, minimize or limit her dam ages. However, plaintiff has no duty to do something that is unreasonable under the circumstances, such as undergo serious or speculative medical treatment or undertake action which imposes unreasonable inconvenience. To prove defendant’s claim of failure to mitigate, he must prove all of the following: 1. There was something plaintiff could to [sic] do mitigate her damages; 2. Requiring plaintiff to do so was reasonable under the circumstances; 3. Plaintiff acted unreasonably in failing to undertake the mitigating activity; and 4. Plaintiff's failure to undertake the mitigating activity proximately caused an identifiable portion of her damages. If the defendant has proved all of these numbered propositions, then defendant has proved this defense, and you shall assign a percentage of fault to the plaintiff for the time period after the failure to mitigate. This amount will be used in answering the special interrogatory in the verdict. If the defendant has failed to prove one or more of these numbered propositions, then defendant has not proved plaintiff failed to mitigate her damages.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Olson v. Sumpter

2. “use of separate verdict forms for the period prior to the plaintiff's alleged failure to mitigate and for the period that includes the plaintiff's alleged failure to mitigate.” 5 . Although not a model of clarity on this point, we interpret Olson’s posttrial motion as an assertion that the additional instruction failed to clearly inform the jury that fault could be attributed to Olson for unreasonable failure to mitigate only for the period after the failure to mitigate commenced. 6 . Olson's posttrial motion contended the evidence was insufficient to allocate fault to Olson”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Olson v. Sumpter

3. “give the evidence 'the most favorable construction possible in favor of the party urging submission.'”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Shari Kinseth and Ricky Kinseth, Coexecutors of the Estate of Larry Kinseth, and Shari Kinseth Individually v. Weil-McLain and State of Iowa ex rel. Civil Reparations Trust Fund