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Comment, Robert A. Leflar

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is increasingly common today for courts to render opinions as they did in an earlier common law era, that is, to answer the principally litigated issue first, then to give answers to incidental questions that are apt to arise thereafter. Admittedly these incidental answers are dicta only, but they are substantially authoritative and serve useful purposes. By employing such a technique, appellate courts can do a better job than legislatures usually have done in promulgating comparative negligence rules. With respect to matters upon which the legislature has never taken any position, legislative inaction constitutes no affirmative assertion of legislative …