93 Wash. 2d 411 - Merrick v. Sutterlin’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
2 district · 56 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 58 later decisions — most recently March 2021 · most notably Dubay v. Irish (1988), 105 Wash. 2d 99 - Jenkins v. Snohomish County Public Utility District No. 1 (1986)
2 district · 56 state decisions — followed in 14 states
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 3 Cal. 3d 914 - Gibson v. Gibson · Goller v. White · Falco v. PADOS · Hewlett v. George · Gelbman v. Gelbman
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 58 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We have examined every case dealing with the issue. We recognize that there may be situations of parental authority and discretion which should not lead to liability. Several courts, such as Wisconsin and California, have attempted to put forth an all-encompassing rule to deal with these situations. We believe that the better approach is to develop the details of any portions of the immunity that should be retained by a case-to-case determination.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“(1) A parent or child is not immune from tort liability to the other solely by reason of that relationship. (2) Repudiation of general tort immunity does not establish liability for an act or omission that, because of the parent-child relationship, is otherwise privileged or is not tortious.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Turner v. Turner“In an exhaustive opinion, ... this court examined and renounced most of the policy considerations advanced by the cases to justify the doctrine of immunity. We approve of that analysis.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Zellmer v. Zellmer
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.