United New York & New Jersey Sandy Hook Pilots Ass'n v. Halecki’s Empirical Analysis
1959
Citation profile
407 federal appellate · 31 district · 37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 699 later decisions (24 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably Butner v. United States (1979), Mitchell v. Trawler Racer, Inc. (1960)
407 federal appellate · 31 district · 37 state decisions — followed in 10 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedHalecki v. United New York & New Jersey Sandy Hook Pilots Ass'n (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki · Pope & Talbot, Inc. v. Hawn · The Osceola · Mahnich v. Southern Steamship Co. · Alaska Steamship Co. v. Petterson
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 699 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] new trial will be required, for there is no way to know that the invalid [legal theory] was not the sole basis for the verdict.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Neither these decisions (Sieracki and Hawn) nor the policy that underlies them can justify extension of liability for unseaworthiness to the decedent in the present ease. The work that he did was in no way “the type of work” traditionally done by the ship’s crew. It was work that could not even be performed upon a ship ready for sea, but only when the ship was “dead” with its generators dismantled. Moreover, it was the work of a specialist, requiring special skill and special equipment. . . . 358 U.S. at 617 , 79 S.Ct. at 519 .”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“It avails nothing to say that the decedent was an `electrician,' and that many modern ships carry electricians in their crew. Pope & Talbot, Inc. v. Hawn explicitly teaches that such labels in this domain are meaningless. See 346 U.S. at 413 [74 S.Ct. 202]. It is scarcely more helpful to indulge in the euphemism that the decedent was `cleaning' part of the ship, and to say that it is a traditional duty of seamen to keep their ship clean. The basic fact is, in the apt words of Judge Lumbard's dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals, that the decedent `was not doing what any crew member had ever done on this ship or anywhere else in the world so far as we are informed.'”
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.