Sochanski v. Sears, Roebuck & Co.’s Empirical Analysis
621 F.2d 67 · 1980
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently December 2015
1 federal appellate · 7 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 Webb v. Zern · Berkebile v. Brantly Helicopter Corp. · Azzarello v. Black Bros. Co., Inc. · Smith v. Bell Telephone Co. · Kuisis v. Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton Corp.
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We recognize that, as a general rule, “prolonged use of a manufactured article is but one factor, albeit an important one, in the determination of the factual issue whether [a defect in design or] manufacture proximately caused the harm.” The age of an allegedly defective product must be considered in light of its expected useful life and the stress to which it has been subjected. In most cases, the weighing of these factors should be left to the finder of fact. But in certain situations the prolonged use factor may loom so large as to obscure all others in a case. Professor Prosser has summarized the position generally taken by the courts on this question: “[Lapse of time and long continued use] in itself is not enough, even when it has extended over a good many years, to defeat the recovery where there is satisfactory proof of an original defect; but when there is no definite evidence, and it is only a matter of inference from the fact that something broke or gave way, the continued use usually prevents the inference that the thing was more probably than not defective when it was sold.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“We express no opinion about the effect of the settlement on Sears because neither Sears, Goodyear nor Sochanski has presented the issue to us.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“when a defective product he has sold is the proximate cause of a user's injuries.”
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.