California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
950 federal appellate · 511 district · 404 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,653 later decisions (70 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Hudson v. Palmer (1984), Lewis Director Arizona Department of Corrections v. Casey (1996)
950 federal appellate · 511 district · 404 state decisions — followed in 36 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
reviewedTrucking Unlimited v. California Motor Transport Co. (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 15 U.S.C. § 15 (§ 4 of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914)
Relies on National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Y Button · Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc. · Parker v. Brown · United Mine Workers v. Pennington
Cited together with Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, Inc. · United Mine Workers v. Pennington · Professional Real Estate Investors, Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. · Parker v. Brown · Conley v. Gibson
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 3,653 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We conclude that it would be destructive of rights of association and of petition to hold that groups with common interests may not, without violating the antitrust laws, use the channels and procedures of state and federal agencies and courts to advocate their causes and points of view respecting resolution of their business and economic interests vis-a-vis their competitors.”
138 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a pattern of baseless, repetitive claims”
60 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“unethical conduct in the setting of the adjudicatory process”
23 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.