Bennett v. Span Industries, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 43 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently January 2019 · most notably Centeq Realty, Inc. v. Siegler (1995), Koonce v. Quaker Safety Products & Manufacturing Co. (1986)
2 federal appellate · 43 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 Moses Lake Homes, Inc. v. Grant County · McKisson v. Sales Affiliates, Inc. · Rourke v. Garza · Farley v. MM Cattle Company · Parker v. Highland Park, Inc.
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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The existence of duty is a question of law when all of the essential facts are undisputed, but when the evidence does not conclusively establish the pertinent facts or the reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom, the question becomes one of fact for the jury. A particularly appropriate case for such a rule is one as here, where the risk reasonably to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed; i.e., where knowledge and foreseeability are important elements of duty.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Whether or not there is a pre-existing privity in legal relationship between the act and the person injured, if the circumstances are such that a person of ordinary common sense would recognize that if he did not exercise reasonable care in his conduct with regard to those circumstances, his acts would place another person in danger, the duty to use ordinary care to avoid such danger arises.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Pope v. St. John
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.