58 Cal. 2d 552 - Merrill v. Buck’s Empirical Analysis
1962
Citation profile
87 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 87 later decisions — most recently April 2013 · most notably Rowland v. Christian (1968), 17 Cal. 3d 425 - Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California (1976)
87 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 56 Cal. 2d 583 - Lucas v. Hamm · 49 Cal. 2d 647 - Biakanja v. Irving · 55 Cal. 2d 857 - Stewart v. Cox · 38 Cal. 2d 330 - State Rubbish Collectors Ass'n v. Siliznoff · Shaw v. Pacific Greyhound Lines
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 87 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 [1] the extent to which the transaction was intended to affect the plaintiff, [2] the foreseeability of harm to him, [3] the degree of certainty that the plaintiff suffered injury, [4] the closeness of the connection between the defendant’s conduct and the injury suffered, [5] the moral blame attached to the defendant’s conduct, and [6] the policy of preventing future harm.’”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“Privity of contract is not necessary to establish the existence of a duty to exercise ordinary care not to injure another, but such duty may arise out of a voluntarily assumed relationship if public policy dictates the existence of such a duty.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“The case is admittedly one without exact precedent, but we are satisfied that, having affirmatively undertaken to show the house to plaintiff in the regular course of their business with the purpose of earning a commission if she decided to rent it, these defendants were under a duty of care to warn her of a concealed danger in the premises of which they were aware and from which her injury might be reasonably foreseen if she did become a tenant. It was for the jury to determine the extent of the hazard, the question of latency, and the character of the conduct of these defendants necessary to constitute the exercise of reasonable care under all of the circumstances.”
1 later decision 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.