Continental Oil Co. v. SS Electra’s Empirical Analysis
431 F.2d 391 · 1970
Citation profile
20 federal appellate · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 39 later decisions — most recently January 2014 · most notably Vulcan v. Zapata Ugland Drilling, Inc. (1977), Delta Steamship Lines, Inc. v. Avondale Shipyards, Inc. (1984)
20 federal appellate · 3 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 The Conqueror · Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal v. United States · The " Potomac" · Bowen v. United States · Universal Dealers Co. v. Cromelin
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 39 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Profit on oil production is simply one means of measuring the damage suffered. The plaintiffs have lost the use of their capital investment in lease, platform and producing wells for 130 days during which that investment was tied up without return. The fact that the same amount of profit can be made at a later time with the same investment of capital by removing from the ground a like quantity of oil at the same site does not alter the fact that the plaintiffs are out of pocket a return on 130 days use of them investment. Presumably the oil companies ultimately will produce from the reservoir all the oil that is economic to produce, but, as the District Court pointed out, it will require 130 days longer to do so.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“If the shipowner is carrying his own cargo and has another vessel available as a temporary replacement for the one under repair he has a duty to use it to mitigate damages and, having earned the profit with the otherwise idle replacement, cannot recover for detention of the vessel being repaired. [Here, however] [t]here is no fleet of drilling platforms, no evidence that the plaintiffs had any other platform or could have set a platform in place and obtained any of the 130 days’ production. The oil companies are like a single shipowner with his ship laid up. It would be no answer to his claim to assert that he has lost nothing because the same cargo is still on the dock when his ship comes out of repair and that he can move it then — if other cargoes are also then available. [emphasis added]”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“In order to make full compensation and indemnity for what has been lost by the collision, restitutio in integrum, the owners of the injured vessel are entitled to recover for loss of her use, while laid up for repairs. When there is a market price for such use, that price is the test of the sum to be recovered. Where there is no market price, evidence of the profits that she would have earned if not disabled is competent; but from the gross freight must be deducted so much as would in ordinaiy cases be disbursed on account of her expenses in earning it; in no event can more than the net profits be recovered by way of damages; and the burden is upon the libellant to prove the extent of the damages actually sustained by him.”
1 later decision 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.