Rawl v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
778 F.2d 1009 · 1985
Citation profile
24 federal appellate · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions — most recently May 2018 · most notably United States v. Wilhelm (1996), United States v. Perrin (1995)
24 federal appellate · 2 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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1346 (Federal Tort Claims Act)
Relies on Anderson v. City of Bessemer City · Pullman-Standard v. Swint · Hannahville Indian Community v. United States · United States v. McConney · Industrial National Bank of Rhode Island v. Wingate Corp.
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The problem of whether the superseding and intervening negligence theory is available only for the benefit of defendants may, however, be simply no more than a matter of labels, for the doctrine of intervening and superseding negligence is very similar to a rule of law which allows a plaintiff to avoid the consequences of contributory negligence by showing that his own negligence did not proximately cause the injury he suffered. Thus, contributory negligence will not bar recovery where the plaintiff can show that his own conduct did not expose him to a foreseeable risk of the particular injury that in fact occurred through the negli gence of the defendant. The doctrine has been characterized in terms of lack of proximate cause: if the harm that occurred was not a foreseeable hazard of plaintiffs negligence, the plaintiff may recover from defendant. The proximate cause of the injury was the defendant’s intervening negligence, and the causal connection between the plaintiffs negligence and the injury was broken.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“(1) whether the harm caused was different in kind from that which would have followed from defendant’s negligence; (2) whether the operation or the consequences of the intervening cause appear after the event to be extraordinary rather than normal in view of the circumstances existing at the time of its operation; (3) whether the intervening force acts independently of the situation or is a normal part of the situation; and (4) whether the intervening cause is a third party’s action or omission.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“is usually a rule allowing a defendant to avoid liability where damages have been caused by a third party or a force that was entirely unforeseeable, so much so that it could hardly be said that the injury was the result of the defendant's negligence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.