Fentress v. Van Etta Motors’s Empirical Analysis
1958
Citation profile
2 district · 11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently June 2012
2 district · 11 state decisions
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 MacPherson v. . Buick Motor Co. · Ultramares Corp. v. Touche · 49 Cal. 2d 647 - Biakanja v. Irving · 42 Cal. 2d 682 - Burr v. Sherwin Williams Co. · People v. Loop
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Property damage is usually readily distinguishable from economic loss. For example, operation of a defective radiator causes property damage when it results in a fire which destroys the plaintiffs store and economic harm when it results in conditions so uncomfortable that it causes the loss of customer patronage. ... If the damage is to the defective product itself, similar distinctions must be drawn. When the defect causes an accident ‘involving some violence or collision with external objects,’ the resulting loss is treated as property damage. On the other hand, when the damage to the product results from deterioration, internal breakage, or other non-accidental causes, it is treated as economic loss, (footnote omitted)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““Will an action lie against the manufacturer of an article which, if negligently made, is likely to produce injury to persons or property, for damages resulting from an accident caused by the negligence, where the damages are confined to the destruction or harm to the article itself?” (emphasis added).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.