Westerhold v. Carroll’s Empirical Analysis
1967
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 1 district · 45 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 59 later decisions — most recently October 2018 · most notably Chubb Group of Insurance Companies v. C.F. Murphy & Associates, Inc. (1983), Hanna v. Huer, Johns, Neel, Rivers & Webb (1983)
6 federal appellate · 1 district · 45 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 Ultramares Corp. v. Touche · Glanzer v. . Shepard · 49 Cal. 2d 647 - Biakanja v. Irving · Carter v. Yardley & Co. · Hull Ex Rel. Hull v. Gillioz
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 59 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"The determination whether in a specific case the defendant will be held liable to a third person not in privity is a matter of policy and involves the balancing of various factors, among which are the extent to which the transaction was intended to affect the plaintiff, the foreseeability of harm to him, the degree of certainty that the plaintiff suffered injury, the closeness of the connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury suffered, the moral blame attached to defendant's conduct, and the policy of preventing future harm" Biakanja v. Irving, 49 Cal.2d 647 , 320 P.2d 16 , 65 A.L.R.2d 1358 . Each and every one of the above elements are not absolutely necessary to authorize an action to be maintained, but we consider all to be satisfied in this case except we doubt that any "moral blame" can be leveled at defendant. When we consider that the other elements are present, and also consider that the usual reasons for limiting actions for the negligent performance of a contractual duty to those in privity of contract are absent, we conclude that the overall policy considerations weighs heavily in favor of the right of plaintiff to maintain this action under the factual circumstances alleged in the petition.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage“[A] party by entering into a contract may place himself in such a relation toward third persons as to impose upon him an obligation to act in such a way that the third persons will not be damaged. Wolfmeyer v. Otis Elevator Co., 262 S.W.2d 18 . In Lambert v. Jones, 339 Mo. 677 , 98 S.W.2d 752, 758 , it was stated that where one under contract with another assumes responsibility for property or instrumentalities and agrees under his contract to do certain things in connection therewith which, if left undone, would likely injure third persons, "there seems to be no good reason why [he] should not be held liable to third persons injured thereby for his failure to do that which he agreed to do, which he assumed responsibility for, and which was reasonably necessary to be done for their protection.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“* * * should be done on a case-to-case basis, with a careful definition of the limits of liability, depending upon the differing conditions and circumstances to be found in individual cases”
2 later decisions 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.