Metcalf v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

40 federal appellate · 8 district · 46 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 118 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““When a party has been deprived of his right by fraud, accident, or mistake, and has no remedy at law, a court of equity will grant relief. Perhaps, in view of the equitable control over their own judgments which courts of law have assumed in modern times, the judgment might have been set aside, on motion, for the cause set forth in the bill; but if this were true, the remedy in equity would still be open, and the fact that the court declined to exercise the power upon motion rendered the resort to a bill necessary and proper. Formerly bills in equity were constantly filed to obtain new trials in actions at law, a practice which still obtains in Kentucky, and perhaps in some other Jurisdictions; but the firmly settled practice by which courts of law entertain motions for new trial, and the dislike of one court unnecessarily to interfere with proceedings in another, has caused an almost total disuse of that jurisdiction. Courts of equity, however, still entertain bills to set aside judgments obtained by fraud, accident, or mistake.” >”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. L. Bucki & Son Lumber Co. v. Atlantic Lumber Co. · Sanford v. White

2. “‘■The ordinary rule undoubtedly is that if a person merely adds to the signature of his name the word agent, trustee, treasurer, etc., without disclosing his principal, he is personally bound. The appendix is regarded as a mere descriptio personae. It does not of itself make third persons chargeable with notice of any representative relation of the signer. But if he be, in fact, a mere agent, trustee, or officer of some principal, and is in the habit of expressing, in (hat way, his representative elm racier in his dealings with a particular party, who recognizes him in that character, it would be contrary to'justice aiid truth to construe the documents thus made and used as his personal obligations, contrary to the intent of the parties.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Monticello Bank v. Bostwick · American Trust Co. v. Canevin