Watkins v. Petro-Search, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
689 F.2d 537 · 1982
Citation profile
27 federal appellate · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently August 2017 · most notably Brooks, Tarlton, Gilbert, Douglas & Kressler v. United States Fire Insurance (1987), Deauville Corporation v. Federated Department Stores Inc (1985)
27 federal appellate · 3 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 United States v. Security Industrial Bank · Sun Oil Co. (Delaware) v. Madeley · National Ass'n for the Advancement of Colored People v. Claiborne Hardware Co. · Pennzoil Co. v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission · Richland Plantation Company v. Justiss-Mears Oil Company 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 court is to take the wording of the contract in light of the surrounding circumstances, in order to ascertain the meaning that would be attached to the wording “by a reasonably intelligent person acquainted with all the operative usages and knowing all the circumstances prior to and contemporaneous with the making of the [integrated contract], other than the oral statements by the parties of what they intended to mean.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a] contract is ambiguous when it is reasonably susceptible to more than one meaning, in the light of the surrounding circumstances and after applying established rules of construction.”); see also Kurtz v. Jackson, 859 S.W.2d 609 , 611 (Tex.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1993, no writ) (”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“for it is objective, not subjective, intent that controls.”
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.