Moe v. Kettwig’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 31 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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"Where an appellant seeks to have a verdict of a jury in a civil case set aside because of erroneous instructions, he [or she] must establish affirmatively by the record presented to the appellate court, that, under the evidence, the jury might, and probably would have returned a different verdict if the erroneous instructions had not been given."”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Sabot v. Fargo Women's Health Organization, Inc. · Wadeson v. American Family Mutual Insurance Co.

2. ““Contributory negligence is an affirmative defense, and must be pleaded and proved by the defendant. The defense in this case has pleaded such a defense, and if it proves by a fair preponderance of the evidence, or if the evidence in the case by a fair preponderance thereof shows, that the plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence which contributed directly, and proximately, as the term ‘proximate cause’ shall be hereinafter defined, to the injury of which the plaintiff complains, the defense has sustained its burden of proof and plaintiff cannot recover. “The proximate cause of an injury, within the meaning of the law of negligence and as used in these instructions, is such a cause as operates to produce particular consequences without the intervention of any unforeseen act or acts without which the injury could not have occurred from the alleged negligent act. Or to state the definition more particularly the proximate cause of any injury is that which causes it directly or immediately, or through a natural sequence of events, without the intervention of another unforeseen independent and efficient cause. The fact that an injury would not have happened but for the act does not necessitate the conclusion that such act was a proximate cause of the injury. Where a person is negligent in some respect, and between his negligence and the injury an entirely and unrelated unforeseen cause intervenes, the second cause is generally regarded as the proximate cause and the first a”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Eriksen v. Boyer

3. ““No rule is better settled than that the court’s instructions must be considered as a whole. The charge is entitled to a reasonable interpretation. It is construed as a whole, in the same connected way in which it was given, upon the presumption that the jury did not overlook any portion, but gave due weight to it as a whole; and this is so, although it consists of clauses originating with different counsel and applicable to different phases of the evidence. If, when so construed, it presents the law fairly and correctly to the jury, in a manner not calculated to mislead them, it will afford no ground for reversing the judgment, although some of its expressions, if standing alone, might be regarded as erroneous, or because there may be an apparent conflict between isolated sentences, or because its parts may be in some respects slightly repugnant to each other or because some one of them taken abstractly, may have been erroneous.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Quam Ex Rel. Quam v. Wengert