Victory Carriers, Inc. v. Law’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
315 federal appellate · 53 district · 73 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 711 later decisions (14 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2019 · most notably Preiser v. Rodriguez (1973), Executive Jet Aviation, Inc. v. City of Cleveland (1972)
315 federal appellate · 53 district · 73 state decisions — followed in 19 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
reviewedLaw v. Victory Carriers, Inc. (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1332 (Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) · 28 U.S.C. § 1333 · 33 U.S.C. § 901 · 33 U.S.C. § 903 · 33 U.S.C. § 905 · 45 U.S.C. § 51 (Federal Employers' Liability Act)
Relies on Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki · Ryan Stevedoring Co. v. Pan-Atlantic Steamship Corp. · Pope & Talbot, Inc. v. Hawn · Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co. · Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen
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 711 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(T)he threshold issue is whether maritime law governs accidents suffered by a longshoreman who is injured on the dock by the allegedly defective equipment owned and operated by his stevedore employer. We hold that under the controlling precedents, federal maritime law does not govern this accident. Nor, in the absence of congressional guidance, are we now inclined to depart from prior law and extend the reach of the federal law to pier-side accidents caused by a stevedore's pier-based equipment.”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(t)he typical elements of a maritime cause of action are particularly attenuated: respondent Law was not injured by equipment that was part of the ship's usual gear or that was stored on board, the equipment that injured him was in no way attached to the ship, the forklift was not under the control of the ship or its crew, and the accident did not occur aboard ship or on the gangplank.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“scrupulously confine their own jurisdiction to the precise limits which [a federal] statute has defined.”
10 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.