74 Cal. App. 4th 337 - Neverkovec v. Fredericks’s Empirical Analysis
1999
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 36 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions — most recently December 2018 · most notably 27 Cal. 4th 516 - Hess v. Ford Motor Co. (2002), 171 Cal. App. 4th 1004 - Spinks v. Equity Residential Briarwood Apartments (2009)
6 federal appellate · 36 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 2 Cal. 4th 1254 - Bank of the West v. Superior Court · 38 Cal. 3d 488 - Tech-Bilt, Inc. v. Woodward-Clyde & Associates · 17 Cal. 3d 937 - Murphy v. Allstate Insurance · 18 Cal. 4th 604 - Artiglio v. Corning Inc. · 36 Cal. 3d 426 - Garcia v. Truck Insurance Exchange
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In determining the meaning of a written contract allegedly made, in part, for the benefit of a third party, evidence of the circumstances and negotiations of the parties in making the contract is both relevant and admissible. And, `[i]n the absence of grounds for estoppel, the contracting parties should be allowed to testify as to their actual intention ....' [Citations.]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he circumstance that a literal contract interpretation would result in a benefit to the third party is not enough to entitle [the third party] to demand enforcement [of the contract].”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[t]he trier of fact must decide how a reasonable person in the releasing party's shoes would have believed the other party understood the scope of the release. Thus, testimony by the releasing party regarding who he thought he was releasing, while it may serve to explain the situation, does not determine the legal effect of the release. How a reasonable person would view the other party's understanding of the release is generally a matter of inference based on the extrinsic evidence. Unless that extrinsic evidence is in conflict, the question is one of law. On a motion for summary judgment, the court may determine which inferences are "reasonably deducible from the evidence," and may grant summary judgment if there is no conflict with other reasonable inferences or evidence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.