Sterling v. Velsicol Chemical Corp.’s Empirical Analysis
855 F.2d 1188 · 1988
Citation profile
96 federal appellate · 18 district · 59 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 381 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Castano v. American Tobacco Co. (1996), Amfac, Inc. v. Waikiki Beachcomber Investment Co. (1992)
96 federal appellate · 18 district · 59 state decisions — followed in 25 states
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 Anderson v. City of Bessemer City · United States v. United States Gypsum Co. · Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Electric Manufacturing Co. · Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody · St Paul Mercury Indemnity Co v. Red Cab 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 381 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In complex, mass, toxic tort accidents, where no one set of operative facts establishes liability, no single proximate cause equally applies to each potential class member and each defendant, and individual issues outnumber common issues, the district court should properly question the appropriateness of a class action for resolving the controversy.”
34 later decisions quote this exact passage“[I]ndividual members of the class still will be required to submit evidence concerning their particularized damage claims in subsequent proceedings.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage“whether the combination of the chemical contaminants and the plaintiffs' exposure to them had the capacity to cause the harm alleged.”
7 later decisions 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.