Williams v. Bruffy’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 district · 16 state decisions

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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “taxes due the State of Virginia on property and persons-in said county, alleging that the property was lawfully seized and taken fob taxes due from the plaintiff to the State, which on demand, he had refused to pay. To this plea the plaintiff replied a tender in payment of the taxes, when demanded and before the trespass complained of, of the amount due, in coupons cut from bonds of the State of Virginia, receivable in payment of taxes by virtue of the act of March 30, 1871. To the replication the defendant demurred specially, on the ground, first, that by the act of January 26, 1882, he was forbidden to receive coupons in payment of taxes, and, second, that by the act of March 13,1884, an action of trespass would not lie in such a case. In this demurrer tbe plaintiff joined, and assigned as a reason why it should ba overruled that the two statutes mentioned and relied on by the defendant were repugnant to section 10, 'Article I, of the Constitution of the United States, and therefore null and void. Judgment was rendered on the demurrer in favor of the defendant. Thereafter, on November 25,1884, the plaintiff filed his petition in the.Supreme Court of Appeals of Yirginia for the allowance of a writ of error; whereupon, as the record recites, the petition, “having been'maturely considered, and the transcript of the record of the judgment aforesaid seen and' inspected, the court, being of ..opinion that said judgment is plainly right, doth deny the said writ.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Chaffin v. Taylor