Exxon Co. v. Sofec, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1996
Citation profile
135 federal appellate · 41 district · 16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 424 later decisions (38 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2024 · most notably 134 S. Ct. 1377 - Lexmark Int'l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc. (2014), Staub v. Proctor Hospital (2011)
135 federal appellate · 41 district · 16 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedExxon Co. v. Sofec, Inc. (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on East River Steamship Corp. v. Transamerica Delaval Inc. · United States v. Reliable Transfer Co. · Goodman v. Lukens Steel Co. · Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Air Products Co. · Milwaukee and Saint Paul Railway Company v. Kellogg
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 424 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A cause can be thought 'superseding' only if it is a 'cause of independent origin that was not foreseeable.'”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The issues of proximate causation and superseding cause involve application of law to fact, which is left to the factfinder, subject to limited review.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the careless actor will [not] always be held for all damages for which the forces that he risked were a cause in fact. Somewhere a point will be reached when courts will agree that the link has become too tenuous-that what is claimed to be consequence is only fortuity. Thus, if the [negligent] destruction of the Michigan Avenue Bridge had delayed the arrival of a doctor, with consequent loss of a patient’s life, few judges would impose liability.”
3 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.