Priebe & Sons, Inc. v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
332 U.S. 407 · 1947
Citation profile
218 federal appellate · 52 district · 66 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 672 later decisions (16 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Boyle v. United Technologies Corp. (1988), Rex Trailer Company v. United States (1956)
218 federal appellate · 52 district · 66 state decisions — followed in 14 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 Erie Co v. Tompkins · Clearfield Trust Co. v. United States · Perkins v. Lukens Steel Co. · United States v. Allegheny County Pa
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 672 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'liquidated damages' provisions in contracts [reflect] fair and reasonable attempts to fix just compensation for anticipated loss caused by breach of contract.... They serve a particularly useful function when damages are uncertain in nature or amount or [are] unmeasurable.”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“It is customary, where Congress has not adopted a different standard, to apply to the construction of government contracts the principles of general contract law.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“was included not to make a fair estimate of damages to be suffered but to serve only as an added spur to performance(,) ... courts do not give their imprimatur to such arrangements.”
3 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.