L. B. Laboratories, Inc. v. Mitchell’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 39 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently March 2017 · most notably Eads v. Marks (1952), Sato v. Van Denburgh (1979)
5 federal appellate · 39 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 6 Cal. 2d 302 - Huysman v. Kirsch · Lattin v. Gillette · Mirich v. Balsinger · Harding v. Liberty Hospital Corp. · Estate of Pillsbury
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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘[T]he obligation upon which a cause of action is founded may be either contractual or delictual in nature. . . . “ ‘For the designation of actions as contractual or delictual, it is to be noted that a contract is defined as an agreement to do or not to do a certain thing, and a tort as any wrong, not consisting in mere breach of contract, for which the law undertakes to give the injured party some appropriate remedy against the wrongdoer. If a cause of action arises from a breach of a promise, the action is contractual in nature; if it arises from the breach of a duty growing out of the contract, it is delictual, and a tort or trespass is none the less such because it also involves a breach of contract. There is obviously some overlapping here, and where it is not clear to which class an action belongs, it will ordinarily be construed as in contract rather than in tort. . . . “. . . ‘In general, however, actions based on negligent failure to perform contractual duties, such as those owing from a hospital or physician to a patient, from an employer to an employee, and from a landlord to a tenant, although containing elements of both contract and tort, are regarded as delictual actions, since negligence is considered the gravamen of the action.’ [Citation omitted.]” 39 Cal. 2d at 62-63 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[a]n action upon any contract, obligation or liability founded upon an instrument in writing”
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.