Houghton v. American Guaranty Life Insurance’s Empirical Analysis
692 F.2d 289 · 1982
Citation profile
15 federal appellate · 2 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently March 2015 · most notably Pacific Indemnity Co. v. Linn (1985), Pritzker
15 federal appellate · 2 district · 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 Singleton v. Wulff · Sea-Land Service, Inc. v. Federal Maritime Commission · Collister v. Nationwide Life Insurance · Pierce v. Georgia · Mohn v. American Casualty Co.
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 57 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“because insurance policies are frequently considered to be contracts of adhesion, any ambiguity in the policy “must be construed against the insurer, and in a manner which is more favorable to coverage.” Houghton v. American Guar. Life Ins. Co., 692 F.2d 289, 291 (3d Cir.1982) (quoting Buntin v. Continental Ins. Co., 583 F.2d 1201, 1207 [3d Cir.1978]).”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Thus, under Pennsylvania law, ambiguous terms of an insurance policy are construed against the insurer. This principle stems from Pennsylvania’s concern that insurance companies, because of their superior bargaining position, should not be permitted to thwart the reasonable expectations of the consumer purchaser.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he language of the policy may not be tortured to create ambiguities where none exist.”
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.