Also known as: trends · trending · trended
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A developing direction or tendency in the evolution of legal rules or standards.
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Tobias Thomas, age seventeen, took a company truck onto the highway for a test drive after repairs. When he caused an accident injuring a passing motorist, the court measured his conduct against the standard of a reasonably prudent adult driver rather than a teenager. The modern trend supplied the governing rule because highway driving constitutes an adult activity.
Tori Taylor sued a corporate defendant after an earlier judgment had already resolved the identical issue against the same party. The court permitted her to invoke the prior finding even though she had not been a party to the first suit. The developing trend toward defensive collateral estoppel without mutuality supplied the basis for preclusion.
Tyrone Tran challenged a state criminal statute that banned nearly all abortions except to save the mother's life. The court noted that roughly one-third of states had recently enacted narrower restrictions modeled on the ALI code. The trend toward liberalization informed the constitutional analysis of the challenged law.
Tracy Torres purchased a new car whose fine-print warranty clause attempted to eliminate all implied protections. The court refused to enforce the disclaimer because legislative and judicial thinking had moved toward stronger buyer safeguards. The prevailing trend supplied the reason for limiting the contractual exclusion.
Tabitha Taylor sued corporate officers in a state where the corporation held no physical assets but the officers had appointed an agent for service. The court upheld jurisdiction because the law had expanded beyond strict territorial limits. The trend toward broader state authority over nonresidents governed the due-process inquiry.
Thomas Thompson challenged a village ordinance that restricted his land to residential use and blocked commercial development. The court upheld the restriction after observing that many states had already sustained similar measures. The trend toward validating comprehensive zoning plans supplied the constitutional foundation for the ordinance.
The modern trend eliminates the age-based standard when the minor engages in an adult activity such as driving on public roads. Liability is then measured by the ordinary reasonable-person standard rather than the conduct expected of a person of the minor's age and experience.
Supporting sources
…lawful justification," leaving interpretation of those standards to the courts.[^maj-36] In the past several years, however, a trend toward liberalization of abortion statutes has resulted in adoption, by about one-third of the States, of less stringent laws, most of them patterned after the ALI Model Penal Code, §…