Stowe v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 17 district · 212 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 241 later decisions — most recently March 2025 · most notably Westport Bank & Trust Co. v. Corcoran (1992), Krawczyk v. Stingle (1988)
3 federal appellate · 17 district · 212 state decisions — followed in 18 states
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 International Ass'n of Machinists v. Duckworth · 56 Cal. 2d 583 - Lucas v. Hamm · Heyer v. Flaig · Dean v. Hershowitz · Tuohey v. Martinjak
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 241 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] third party seeking to enforce a contract must allege and prove that the contracting parties intended that the promisor should assume a direct obligation to the third party.”
24 later decisions quote this exact passage“draw the line between those third persons whose benefit is so indirect and incidental that it is not sound policy to let them enforce the contract, and some other persons whose benefit is so direct and substantial and so closely connected with that of the promisee that it is economically desirable to let them enforce it.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“[c]ontracts for the benefit of a third party are enforceable without any requirement that the promisor's performance be rendered directly to the intended beneficiary.”
4 later decisions 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.