Lot of people run into this plagiarizing thing, and as you said, by accident. I remember Alex Haley was sued by Margart Walker of Jubilee because he used a term and a character in his Roots book. In his book he has Tildy stepping out of the back door of the shack and saying "here chick, chick, chick", when in Walker's Jubilee the character Viry did it first. Now my question is this: how do you really know if you are plagiarizing or not? If I said that one of my characters is this domineering lady who controls her family and will stoop to anything to kill, and that she is attendingthe wedding of her daughter, that she has three sons. Familiar? The Godfather of course.
Joseph