80 Wash. 2d 117 - Pratt v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently May 2023
22 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 36 Wash. 2d 256 - Cook v. Seidenverg · 64 Wash. 2d 570 - Ward v. Zeugner · 71 Wash. 2d 646 - Sailor v. Ohlde · Bracy v. Lund
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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Here it is plain the accident which caused [plaintiff's] injuries was not a part of the natural and continuous sequence of events which flowed from [defendant's] act in leaving their station wagon in the parking lot. It was the result of new and independent forces. Among the new forces were the stealing of the vehicle, the pursuit by the state patrol, the attempt by the thieves to run from the officers and, finally, the accident. When, as here, the facts do not admit of reasonable differences of opinion, proximate cause is a question of law to be decided by the court.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“After [the students] had driven the stolen vehicle for a while, the state patrol saw it and pursued. A high speed chase followed. The accident occurred and the [plaintiffs] were injured.”
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.