274 Cal. App. 2d 424 - Grinnell v. Charles Pfizer & Co.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 federal appellate · 75 state decisions

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 99 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “There are some products which, in the present state of human knowledge, are quite incapable of being made safe for their intended and ordinary use. These are especially common in the field of drugs. An outstanding example is the vaccine for the Pasteur treatment of rabies, which not uncommonly leads to very serious and damaging consequences when it is injected. Since the disease itself invariably leads to a dreadful death, both the marketing and the use of the vaccine are fully justified, notwithstanding the unavoidable high degree of risk which they involve. Such a product, properly prepared, and accompanied by proper directions and warning, is not defective, nor is it unreasonably dangerous. The same is true of many other drugs, vaccines, and the like, many of which for this very reason cannot legally be sold except to physicians, or under the prescription of a physician ... The seller of such products, again with the qualification that they are properly prepared and marketed, and proper warning is given, where the situation calls for it, is not to be held to strict liability for unfortunate consequences attending their use, merely because he has undertaken to supply the public with an apparently useful and desirable product, attended with a known but apparently reasonable risk. (Emphasis in original).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Snawder v. Cohen

2. ““An ‘express warranty’ means simply an undertaking or covenant that the thing which is the subject of the contract is or is not of a certain quality or capacity.” (Yuba Mfg. Co. v. Stone, 39 Cal. App. 440, 444 , 179 P. 418, 420 .) The essential ingredients of an express warranty are that there must be an affirmation of fact by the seller with reference to the thing sold, rather than a mere expression of the seller’s opinion, belief, judgment or estimate, and that there be a reliance on such affirmation by the purchaser of the thing sold, [citations omitted]. 6”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Agricultural Services Association, Incorporated v. Ferry-Morse Seed Company, Incorporated, and Waldo Rohnert Company, Third-Party

3. “It is immaterial whether defendant had actual knowledge of the contraindications. “The obligation of a warranty is absolute, and is imposed as a matter of law irrespective, of whether the seller knew or should have known of the falsity of his representations.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 667 F. Supp. 1332 - Morris v. Parke, Davis & Co.