Evans v. Otis Elevator Co.’s Empirical Analysis
1961
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 2 district · 125 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 169 later decisions — most recently December 2025 · most notably Gilbert v. Korvette's Inc. (1974), Blessing v. United States (1978)
11 federal appellate · 2 district · 125 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 Jones Et Vir v. Williams · Pennsylvania Co. for Insurances on Lives & Granting Annuities v. Philadelphia · Dahms v. General Elevator Co. · Finnerty v. Darby · Shaull v. AS Beck New York Shoe Co., Inc.
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 169 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ * * However, a party to a contract by the very nature of his contractual undertaking may place himself in such a position that the law will impose upon him a duty to perform his contractual undertaking in such manner that third persons — strangers to the contract — will not be injured thereby * * *. It is not the contract per se which creates the duty; it is the law which imposes the duty because of the nature of the undertaking in the contract. If a person undertakes by contract to make periodic examinations and inspections of equipment, such as elevators, he should reasonably foresee that a normal and natural result of his failure to properly perform such an undertaking might result in injury not only to the owner of the equipment but also to third persons, including the owner’s employees * *”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage““ ‘. . . the line of demarcation between matters of fact and of opinion is frequently so indistinct that the admissibility of the testimony is largely a matter of the trial court’s discretion, and even if technical error has been made, there will be no reversal in the absence of prejudicial error.’””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“the reasons assigned . . . with such clarity that both the court and the adverse party may be informed of the import of such reasons and given sufficient opportunity to meet them.”
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.