Butler v. Sears’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 7 district ·

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.

1. “A class action is the more efficient procedure for determining liability and damages in a case such as this, involving a defect that may have imposed costs on tens of thousands of consumers yet not a cost to any one of them large enough to justify the expense of an individual suit. If necessary a determination of liability could be followed by individual hearings to determine the damages sustained by each class member (probably capped at the cost of replacing a defective washing machine— there doesn’t seem to be a claim that the odors caused an illness that might support a claim for products liability as distinct from one for breach of warranty). But probably the parties would agree on a schedule of damages based on the cost of fixing or replacing class members’ mold-contaminated washing machines. The class action procedure would be efficient not only in cost, but also in efficacy, if we are right that the stakes in an individual case would be too small to justify the expense of suing, in which event denial of class certification would preclude any relief. [[Image here]] [T]he district court will want to consider whether to create different subclasses of the control unit class for the different states. That should depend on whether there are big enough differences among the relevant laws of those states to make it impossible to draft a single, coherent set of jury instructions should the case ever go to trial before a jury.”

   6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Bhasker v. Kemper Cas. Ins. Co. · Zuniga v. Bernalillo County

2. “Is it more efficient, in terms both of economy of judicial resources and of the expense of litigation to the parties, to decide some issues on a class basis or all issues in separate trials?”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Bhasker v. Kemper Cas. Ins. Co.

3. “all Kenmore-brand frontloading 'high efficiency' washing machines”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Gonzalez v. Corning