Conrad v. Delta Air Lines, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
494 F.2d 914 · 1974
Citation profile
81 federal appellate · 8 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 143 later decisions — most recently September 2017 · most notably Stepanischen v. Merchants Despatch Transportation Corp. (1983), Stern v. United States Gypsum, Inc. (1977)
81 federal appellate · 8 district · 6 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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1331 · 28 U.S.C. § 1337 · 45 U.S.C. § 152 (Railway Labor Act) · 45 U.S.C. § 182 (Railway Labor Act)
Relies on Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad · Ford Motor Co v. Huffman International Union United Automobile Aircraft and Agricultural Implementworkers of America Ci · Elgin Ry Co v. Burley · Andrews v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad · Glover v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Co.
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 143 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'Cases in which the underlying issue is one of motivation, intent, or some other subjective fact are particularly inappropriate for summary judgment, as are those in which the issues turn on the credibility of the affiants.'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a]nti-union motivation invalidates even a discharge which could be justified on independent grounds”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In the absence of a statute or an agreement, an employer may discharge his employee for cause or without cause, and the Act does not limit the employer’s right to discharge to instances involving cause. Russ v. Southern Ry. Co., 334 F.2d 224, 228 (6th Cir., 1964), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 991 , 85 S.Ct. 699 , 13 L.Ed.2d 611 . In our case the employer has agreed to limit its freedom to discharge a pilot who has served one year or more, but plaintiff is not in that class. The conditioning of an employee’s right not to be discharged without a hearing on his having a certain period of service is not arbitrary nor irrational. The rationality of an employer’s having greater freedom to discharge during a probationary or testing period seems obvious. It is not the type of hostile discrimination against a group of employees which would lie beyond the proper scope of a collective bargaining agreement. Steele v. Louisville & Nashville R. R. Co., 323 U.S. 192, 200 , 65 S.Ct. 226, 231 , 89 L.Ed. 173 (1944); Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U.S. 330 , 73 S.Ct. 681 , 97 L.Ed. 1048 (1953). Plaintiff’s original complaint, and the grievance on which he asked ALPA to represent him, embraced only the claim that Delta could not discharge him without the investigation and hearing described in the collective bargaining agreement. Now that, after discovery of Delta’s files, he is asserting that he was discharged for activity as a union member, he attempts to argue that the fact of the collective bargain”
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.