Graff v. Beard’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 1 district · 106 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 121 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““social, economic, and political questions and their application to the facts at hand”; “the risk, foreseeability, and likelihood of injury"; “the social utility of the actor’s conduct”; “the magnitude of the burden of guarding against the injuiy”; “the consequences of placing the burden on the defendant”; and “whether one party would generally have superior knowledge of the risk or a right to control the actor who caused the harm.””

   6 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Humble Sand & Gravel, Inc. v. Gomez · Kovar v. Krampitz

2. “[Gjiven the ultimate power of guests to control their own alcohol consumption and the absence of any legal right of the host to control the guest, we find the arguments for shifting legal responsibility from the guest to the host, who merely makes alcohol available at social gatherings, unconvincing. As the common law has long recognized, the imbiber maintains the ultimate power and thus the obligation to control his own behavior: to decide to drink or not to drink, to drive or not to drive. We therefore conclude that the common law’s focus should remain on the drinker as the person primarily responsible for his own behavior and best able to avoid the foreseeable risks of that behavior.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Allen v. Walmart Stores, L.L.C. · Edwards v. Silva

3. “(b) Providing, selling, or serving an alcoholic beverage may be made the basis of a statutory cause of action under this chapter ... upon proof that: (1) at the time the provision occurred it was apparent to the provider that the individual being sold, served, or provided with an alcoholic beverage was obviously intoxicated to the extent that he presented a clear danger to himself and others; and (2) the intoxication of the recipient of the alcoholic beverage was the proximate cause of the damages suffered.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Venetoulias v. O'BRIEN · Calvin Harris and Madelyn Harris v. Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo Inc., and Carral Club, Inc.