Housing Authority v. Pittman Construction Co.’s Empirical Analysis
264 F.2d 695 · 1959
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 2 district · 28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently November 2015 · most notably Haughton Elevator Division v. STATE, ETC. (1979), Borel v. Young (2008)
1 federal appellate · 2 district · 28 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 Boxwell v. Department of Highways · Smith v. Town of Vinton · St. Landry Lumber Co. v. Mayor of Bunkie · Sternberg v. Board of Com'rs of Tangipahoa Drainage Dist. No. 1
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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he statute vests in the awarding authority the power and discretion to determine the responsibility of the bidder and to reject all bids if none is satisfactory, but the law does not permit the arbitrary selection of one which is higher and the rejection of others which are lower. The discretion must be exercised in a fair and legal manner and not arbitrarily.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"This case can be sliced down to the Board's deciding that the low bidder was not a responsible bidder — without giving the low bidder a fair chance to disprove the charges or irresponsibility. By any reasonable standards, such action offends one's sense of fair play and is an arbitrary abuse of discretion inconsistent with the letter and the spirit of the Louisiana Public Works Law." "In arriving at our conclusions we are not unmindful of the limitations inherent in administrative action of a public body. The members of the Board of the Opelousas Housing Authority are laymen. We do not expect such a Board to conduct FBI investigations, hold elaborate hearings, adhere to legal rules of evidence, and function as a judicial body. Members of public boards, however, have as well developed bumps of fairness and reasonableness as judges. In the light of what fair-minded, reasonable laymen would do, we think that before a Board disqualifies the lowest bidder as not responsible, the lowest bidder has the right to be heard and the Board has the duty to listen on the subject of responsibility. In this case the Board's failure to recognize the bidder's right to be heard prior to Board action on the charges presented at the June 6 meeting and the Board's failure to listen when it was given an opportunity to listen were an abuse of discretion."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“according to the contract, plans and specifications as advertised,”
2 later decisions 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.