United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
17 district · 66 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 123 later decisions — most recently February 2014 · most notably Crispin v. Volkswagenwerk, A.G. (1984), Dewey v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. (1990)
17 district · 66 state decisions — followed in 27 states
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 Sartor v. Arkansas Natural Gas Corp. · Byrd v. Blue Ridge Rural Electric Cooperative, Inc. · Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc. · 33 Cal. 2d 80 - Summers v. Tice · Stoner v. New York Life Insurance
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 123 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"Unlike orthodox products liability or negligence litigation, crashworthy or second collision cases impugning the design of an automobile require a highly refined and almost invariably difficult presentation of proof in three aspects. First, in establishing that the design in question was defective, the plaintiff must offer proof of an alternative, safe design, practicable under the circumstances. This the plaintiff did: plaintiff's expert Albert Fonda introduced into evidence the head restraints of several other automobile manufacturers which allegedly were better designed; and it was suggested that G.M.'s head restraint would have been safer if it had merely been turned around so that the `ax-like' portion was not `aimed' at the rear of the driver's head. Second, the plaintiff must offer proof of what injuries, if any, would have resulted had the alternative, safer design been used. This, in our view, was not satisfactorily established. We agree in this regard with Judge Barlow in Yetter v. Rajeski , 364 F. Supp. 105 , 109 (D.N.J. 1973) that `it is absolutely necessary that the jury be presented with some evidence as to the extent of injuries, if any, which would have been suffered . . . had the plaintiff's hypothetical design been installed. . . .' Third, as a corollary to the second aspect of proof, the plaintiff must offer some method of establishing the extent of enhanced injuries attributable to the defective design. Having failed to establish satisfactorily the second”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"[T]he manufacturer is required to take reasonable stepswithin the limitations of cost, technology, and marketability to design and produce a vehicle that will minimize the unavoidable danger. Rephrased in the terminology of strict liability, the manufacturer must consider accidents as among the `intended' uses of its product." 537 F.2d at 735 .”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“I charge you, however, that the relative severity of the impact is relevant *Page 1186 only to your consideration of proximate cause, not to your consideration of whether there was a defect in the design of the head rest. . . . "This instruction, we believe, was error. If a products liability case is submitted to the jury, it is the jury who must determine whether the product was `reasonably fit for the ordinary purposes for which such articles are sold and used.' Santor v. A and M Karagheusian, Inc. , [ 44 N.J. 52 , at 67, 207 A.2d 305 , at 313 (1965) ]. The `relative severity of the impact' goes to the heart of the issue of defectiveness in terms of the `ordinary purposes' for which the product, the head restraint, was designed. "We emphasize here the unique aspect of `defectiveness' presented by a crashworthy case. Ordinarily, where a product malfunctions and itself precipitates injury, there is little problem in establishing a defect; the issue frequently is whether the defect is traceable to the defendant manufacturer, or whether the defect arose after the product left the manufacturer's control, e.g., by long usage of the product. See Moraca v. Ford Motor Co. , 66 N.J. 454 , 332 A.2d 599 (1975). However, in a crashworthy case, impugning the design of the product in question, the difficulties are reversed. There can be no doubt that the design of the product is traceable to the manufacturer. The central issue is: was the product `defective'? And this can only be evaluate”
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.