St. Clair v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
279 F.2d 119 · 1960
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 3 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently November 2011
9 federal appellate · 3 district · 5 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 Berra v. United States · Achilli v. United States · Eastern Air Lines, Inc. v. Union Trust Co. · Monrote v. Britton · United States v. Union Trust 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The defendant should not be permitted to put in evidence anything he may unearth which reflects unfavorably upon the decedent. Except as they may show a propensity of the decedent to spend his income in ways which do not inure to the benefit of his family, the details of his personal life are not in issue and, in the present case, the history of St. Clair's relationship with the plaintiff bore no relation to any matter which was in issue. The manner in which men choose to conduct their personal lives very often has little bearing on the way that they manage their business affairs. In the absence of some preliminary showing to the contrary, a court ought not to suppose that evidence of the former is of utility in determining the latter. Moreover, in the case before us, any remote evidentiary value that the details of the decedent's personal life may have had was far outweighed by the certainty that prejudice to the plaintiff's case in the minds of the jurors would result from the introduction of evidence showing in all light not only the decedent but the plaintiff as well.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[undoubtedly personal habits and qualities are to some degree relevant considerations in determining an individual’s earning ability and the support that his family would have received from him but for his death____ [T]hat some aspects of a decedent’s character may properly be shown in determining the damages to be awarded in a wrongful death action does not mean, however, that all his habits and qualities are relevant. The defendant should not be permitted to put in evidence anything he may unearth which reflects unfavorably upon the decedent.”
1 later decision 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.