Lamm v. Shingleton’s Empirical Analysis
1949
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 6 district · 64 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 85 later decisions — most recently August 2019 · most notably Stanback v. Stanback (1979), 54 Cal. 3d 868 - Christensen v. Superior Court (1991)
5 federal appellate · 6 district · 64 state decisions — followed in 15 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 Renihan v. Wright · Fitzsimmons v. Olinger Mortuary Ass'n · Troitino v. Goodman · Wright v. Beardsley · Troitino v. . Goodman
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 85 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Where the contract is personal in nature and the contractual duty or obligation is so coupled with matters of mental concern or solicitude, with the sensibilities of the party to whom the duty is owed, that a breach of that duty will necessarily or reasonably result in mental anguish or suffering, and it should be known to the parties from the nature of the contract that such suffering will result from its breach, compensatory damages therefor may be recovered.””
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[w]hen the defendants contracted with plaintiff to inter the body of her deceased husband in a workmanlike manner they do so with the knowledge that she was the widow and would naturally and probably suffer mental anguish if they failed to fulfill their contractual obligation in the manner here charged. The contract was predominately personal in nature and no substantial pecuniary loss would follow its breach. Her mental concern, her sensibilities, and her solicitude were the prime considerations for the contract, and the contract itself was such as to put the defendants on notice that a failure on their part to inter the body properly would probably produce mental suffering on her part. It cannot be said, therefore, that such damages were not within the contemplation of the parties at the time the contract was made.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[s]ome type of mental anguish, anxiety, or distress is apt to result from the breach of any contract which causes pecuniary loss. Yet damages therefor are deemed to be too remote to have been in the contemplation of the parties at the time the contract was entered into to be considered as an element of compensatory damages.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.