Wolfe v. Graether’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 3 district · 30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 44 later decisions — most recently December 2006 · most notably Lockhart v. Cedar Rapids Community School District (1997), Fogel v. Trustees of Iowa College (1989)
6 federal appellate · 3 district · 30 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 55 Cal. 2d 224 - Lipman v. Brisbane Elementary School District · Smith v. Ford Motor Co. · Knickerbocker Ice Co. v. Gardiner Dairy Co. · Meyer v. Nottger · Barney v. Winona & St. Peter Railroad
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 44 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[B]oth of them [the employer and the employee] may understand that the hiring is for a definite period. The circumstances may be evidential of such an understanding, even though the express words, standing alone, would not bear such an interpretation.... [0]ne of the parties (usually the employee) may have had in mind a definite period of employment and the other party had not. Here there is no actual “meeting of the minds”; and yet there may be a valid contract. Interpreting the elliptical expressions of the parties, the court may find that the expressions, interpreted in the light of the surrounding facts, made the understanding of one of the parties reasonable and made it unreasonable for the other party not to know that such would be the first party’s understanding. In such a case, there is a contract in accordance with that understanding.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“Contracts expressly offering lifetime or permanent employment or which a trier of fact has interpreted as offering such employment based on extrinsic evidence will be interpreted as indefinite and terminable at will in the absence of some executed consideration in addition to the services being rendered.” Wolfe v. Grather, 389 N.W.2d 643, 652 (Iowa 1986). This Court has already concluded that Defendant’s handbook did not rise to the level of an employment contract or a”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“A question of interpretation of an integrated agreement is to be determined by the trier of fact if it depends on the credibility of extrinsic evidence or on a choice among reasonable inferences to be drawn from extrinsic evidence. Otherwise a question of interpretation of an integrated agreement is to be determined as a question of law.”
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.