Mitchell v. H. B. Zachry Co.’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
168 federal appellate · 19 district · 20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 275 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2024 · most notably Metro Industrial Painting Corp. v. Terminal Construction Co. (1961), Mitchell v. Mitchell Truck Line, Inc. (1961)
168 federal appellate · 19 district · 20 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedH. B. Zachry Company v. James P. Mitchell, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor. James P. Mitchell, Secretary of Labor, United States Department of Labor v. H. B. Zachry Company (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 29 U.S.C. § 201 (American Samoa Labor Standards Amendments of 1956) · 29 U.S.C. § 203 · 29 U.S.C. § 207 · 45 U.S.C. § 51 (Federal Employers' Liability Act)
Relies on Kirschbaum v. Walling US Arsenal Bldg Corporation · Walling v. Jacksonville Paper Co. · Armour & Co. v. Wantock · Mitchell v. Lublin, McGaughy & Associates · Ex Parte Barber
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 275 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Furthest removed from `commerce' is employment not `in' production `for' commerce but in an activity which is only `related' to such production. In applying this provision, we have necessarily borne in mind that it is furthest removed in the scheme of the statute from the hub of the national interest in `commerce' upon which a limited displacement of state power is predicated. 20”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“* * * Regardful of the governing principle that coverage turns upon the nature of the employees' duties, and not upon the nature, local or interstate, of the employer's general business, we held the case [Callus] distinguishable from Borden and Kirschbaum because the employment, since part of an enterprise which `spontaneously satisfies the common understanding of what is local business,' was itself sufficiently different, despite identical employee duties, from prior cases to justify regarding it as separate from the `necessary parts of a commercial process' which are within the Act. These decisions and distinctions were not exercises in lexicography. No niceties in phrasing or formula of words could do service for judgment, could dispense with painstaking appraisal of all the variant elements in the different situations presented by successive cases in light of the purpose of Congress to limit coverage short of the exercise by it of its full power under the Commerce Clause.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“so directly and vitally related to the functioning of an instrumentality or facility of interstate commerce as to be, in practical effect, a part of it * * *.”
4 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.