411 Pa. Super. 347 - Bash v. Bell Telephone Co.’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 2 district · 100 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 239 later decisions — most recently December 2025 · most notably Yocca v. Pittsburgh Steelers Sports, Inc. (2004), 2002 Pa. Super. 347 - Etoll, Inc. v. Elias/Savion Advertising, Inc. (2002)
4 federal appellate · 2 district · 100 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 Hoffman v. Misericordia Hospital · Schott v. Westinghouse Electric Corp. · Bata v. Central-Penn Nat. Bank of Phila. · County of Allegheny v. Commonwealth · Fried v. Fried
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 239 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[ although they derive from a common origin, distinct differences between civil actions for tort and contract breach have developed at common law. Tort actions he for breaches of duties imposed by law as a matter of social policy, while contract actions he only for breaches of duties imposed by mutual consensus agreements between particular individuals.... To permit a promisee to sue his promisor in tort for breaches of contract inter se would erode the usual rules of contractual recovery and inject confusion into our well-settled forms of actions.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Martin v. Finley · Ferraro v. Lee“the parties' obligations are defined by the terms of the contracts, and not by the larger social policies embodied in the law of torts.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“A demurrer can only be sustained where the complaint is clearly insufficient to establish the pleader’s right to relief. For the purpose of testing the legal sufficiency of the challenged pleading[,] a preliminary objection in the nature of a demurrer admits as true all well-pleaded, material, relevant facts, and every inference fairly deducible from those facts. The pleader’s conclusions or averments of law are not considered to be admitted as true by a demurrer. Since the sustaining of a demurrer results in a denial of the pleader’s claim or a dismissal of his suit, a preliminary objection in the nature of a demurrer should be sustained only in cases that clearly and without a doubt fail to state a claim for which relief may be granted. If the facts as pleaded state a claim for which relief may be granted under any theory of law then there is sufficient doubt to require the preliminary objection in the nature of a demurrer to be rejected.”
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.