Otis Elevator Company v. Marshall L. Robinson and Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, Intervener’s Empirical Analysis
287 F.2d 62 · 1961
Citation profile
18 federal appellate · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently September 1995 · most notably Helene Curtis Industries, Inc. v. Pruitt (1967), D/s Ove Skou v. James B. Hebert, Port Arthur Shipping Corporation v. D/s Ove Skou, Southern Stevedoring & Contracting Company v. D/s Ove Skou and United Fruit Company, James B. Hebert v. D/s Ove Skou and United Fruit Company (1966)
18 federal appellate · 9 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 McCray v. Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway Co. · Clegg v. Hardware Mutual Casualty Co. · Warren Petroleum Co. v. Thomasson · Dement v. Olin-Mathieson Chemical Corp. · McClendon v. T. L. James & 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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The jury must have concluded that three times is too much, once perhaps, twice maybe, but certainly no for the third time. Otis knew of the specific phenomenon. It did not remedy it the first time. It did not remedy it the second time. That, the jury could infer, shows a failure to exercise ordinary prudence in making the repair. Indeed, in many ways, the expertise of Otis may have convicted it in the jury’s mind more by reason of this unexplained triple occurrence than had Robinson been able to prove the absence or defect of a particular screw or resistor, relay, vacuum tube or insulator. Proof would have had to come from an Otis employee. Otis was hired because it knew elevators. The jury may have reasoned that until Otis could come in and identify the cause (or all possible causes) and then show why this could not reasonably have been discovered, the failure of the expert to locate and correct the source of trouble showed neglect in the performance of the work in which it claimed pre-eminent competence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““Of course this is not the first time that something has occurred that simply could not have happened. The more complex becomes our machine age civilization the more this becomes evident. * * * “The weakness of the defense by Otis before the jury, as well as the development of its legal theory here, is that in the final analysis it is really the assertion that the accident never happened. * * * ⅜ * “But the jury saw and heard Robinson. * * * It was entitled to, and did, find that the accident happened just as Robinson said it did. * * * * * “There was a solid basis for jury inferences from circumstances which have a compelling attraction in the ordinary experience of men. That was enough.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Proof by circumstantial evidence is not confined to the narrower limits of res ipsa loquitur which, as we have pointed out, `* * * is simply a facet of the general law that verdicts may rest upon circumstantial evidence.'”
1 later decision 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.