Cormier v. Comeaux’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 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 1 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “If the shoulder meets the minimum safety standards, the driver who exits the travel lane ... has the benefit of the eight-foot wide shoulder on which to recover. Even when, as in this case, the shoulder does not meet minimum safety standards, a properly designed foreslope will give the driver additional protection. If the fore slope is 4:1 or flatter, the driver has a margin of safety in which to regain control of his (or her) vehicle.... A foreslope that does not meet minimum safety standards is made even more dangerous by a back slope which does not meet minimum safety standards. Even if the shoulder and the foreslope do not meet minimum standards and a vehicle is pulled into the ditch, if the back slope is properly designed, the vehicle may be able to exit on the far side of the ditch under control. However, a vehicle trapped into a downward spiral by a too-severe foreslope is destined to collide with an improperly-designed and too-steep back slope.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Cormier v. Comeaux

2. “combination of defects basically guaranteed that a vehicle inadvertently leaving the travel lane of U.S. Highway 90, even at a safe speed, would not recover and would ultimately collide with the back slope of the adjacent ditch.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Cormier v. Comeaux

3. “using appropriate trigometric function, the angle at which the vehicle left the highway was less than seventeen degrees.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Cormier v. Comeaux