Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Wallace’s Empirical Analysis
172 F.2d 802 · 1949
Citation profile
14 federal appellate · 2 district · 10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently March 2008 · most notably Bassett Furniture Industries, Inc. v. McReynolds (1976), Shell Oil Co. v. Leftwich (1972)
14 federal appellate · 2 district · 10 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 Sykes v. Stone & Webster Engineering Corp. · Marchbanks v. Duke Power Co. · Bogoratt v. Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Co. · Massolini v. Driscoll · Fox v. Fafnir Bearing Co.
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he chief purpose of enactments like the Virginia statute ... is to “protect the employees of subcontractors who are not financially responsible and to prevent employers from relieving themselves of liability (for compensation) by doing through independent contractors what they would otherwise do through direct employees.”.... The statute was not intended to relieve employers from liability for their own negligence which causes injury to the employees of independent contractors engaged in the performance of work for employers outside the scope of the latter’s occupation.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“to bring within the operation of the Compensation Act all persons engaged in any work that is a part of the trade, business or occupation of the original party who undertakes as owner, or contracts as contractor, to perform that work, and to make liable to every employe[e] engaged in that work every such owner, or contractor, and subcontractor, above such employe[e]. But when the employe[e] reaches an employer in the ascending scale, of whose trade, business or occupation the work being performed by the employe[e] is not a part, then that employer is not liable to that employe[e] for compensation ....”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““The test is not whether the owner, by engaging an independent contractor to perform some part of his business, thereby engages in the business of the independent contractor. It is whether the independent contractor is performing work that is part of the trade, business or occupation of the owner.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.