Barton v. Owen’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 52 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions — most recently January 2015 · most notably 21 Cal. 3d 869 - Lemons v. Regents of University of California (1978), 27 Cal. 3d 285 - Truman v. Thomas (1980)
2 federal appellate · 52 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 Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. · Texas & Pacific Railway Co. v. Behymer · 8 Cal. 3d 229 - Cobbs v. Grant · 25 Cal. 2d 486 - Ybarra v. Spangard · New England Coal & Coke Co. v. Northern Barge Corporation
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[Such an instruction] embodies the notion that differing doctors may disagree in good faith upon what would encompass the proper treatment or diagnosis of a medical problem in a given situation. Medicine is not a field of absolutes. There is not ordinarily only one correct route to be followed at any given time. There is always the need for professional judgment as to what course of conduct would be most appropriate with regard to the patient’s condition. Thus [the instruction] states the rule that where there are several methods of approved diagnosis or treatment, which could be made available to a patient, it is for the doctor to use his best judgment to pick the proper one.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“In much the same way that laymen [on the jury] are not qualified to judge whether a doctor has been negligent because of their lack of common knowledge on the subject, they also are not qualified from a medical standpoint to determine the effects of the `negligent' acts of the plaintiff.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“It is the duty of a patient to follow all reasonable and proper advice and instructions given him by his doctor regarding the patient's care, activities and treatment.”
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.