Case Citator › Dalehite v. United States

Dalehite v. United States

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Overruled in part
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
346 U.S. 15
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
48 of 48
Citing cases (total)
48
Treatment dates
1957
Overruled in part
A reviewed court has overruled part of this case’s holding. Dalehite v. United States was overruled in part on federal liability for negligent firefighting. The Supreme Court rejected its rule that public firefighters' negligence cannot support a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act when state law would hold a private person liable in like circumstances.
More on how this was screened

Dalehite's other holdings remain in use. All 48 flagged citations have been read; the confirmed treatment is listed below.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

48 later cases cite Dalehite v. United States; 48 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Dalehite v. United States?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Overruled in part

  • The Supreme Court rejected Dalehite's exclusion of negligent public firefighting from the Federal Tort Claims Act and required the ordinary private-person comparison.

    Rayonier Inc. v. United States · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    But as we recently held in Indian Towing Co. v. United States, 350 U. S. 61, the test established by the Tort Claims Act for determining the United States’ liability is whether a private person would be responsible for similar negligence under the laws of the State where the acts occurred. We expressly decided in Indian Towing that the United States’ liability is not restricted to the liability of a municipal corporation or other public body and that an injured party cannot be deprived of his rights under the Act by resort to an alleged distinction, imported from the law of municipal corporations, between the Government’s negligence when it acts in a “proprietary” capacity and its negligence when it acts in a “uniquely governmental” capacity.1 To the extent that there was anything to the contrary in the Dalehite case it was necessarily rejected by Indian Towing.2
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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