Bond v. Dustin’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

157 federal appellate · 8 district · 8 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 251 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The record before us contains nothing to show that there was any stipulation in writing waiving a jury. The Circuit Court had authority to try and determine the ease, whether the waiver was written or oral. In the finding of facts and in the judgment there is no statement upon the subject. The only evidence of a waiver of a jury is in the statement in the record that when the case came on for trial ‘the issue joined by consent is tried by the court, a jury being waived’; and in the recital at the beginning of the bill •of exceptions, ‘The above cause coming on for trial, by agreement of parties, by the court, without the intervention of a jury.’ The case cannot be distinguished, in any particular favorable to the plaintiffs in error, from those, of Madison County v. Warren [ 106 U. S. 622 , 2 S. Ct. 86 , 27 L. Ed. 311 ] and Alexander County v. Kimball [ 106 U. S. 623 , 2 S. Ct. 86 , 27 L. Ed. 311 ], above cited, the latest adjudications upon the subject, both of which came up from the same court as the present ease. In one of those eases, the statement in the record was ‘the parties having stipulated to submit the ease for trial by the court without the intervention of a jury’; and, in the bill of exceptions, ‘said cause being tried by the court without a jury, by agreement of parties.’ In the other case, the statement in the record was in the very same words as in the ease at bar; and in the bill of exceptions was in these words: ‘Upon the trial of this cause before Hon. S.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Harris v. Newsom

2. ““The finding of issues in fact by the court upon the evidence is altogether unknown to a common-law court, and cannot he recognized as a judicial act. Such questions are exclusively within the province of the jury; and if, by agreement of parties, the questions of fact in dispute are submitted for decision to the judge upon the evidence, he does not exercise judicial authority in deciding, but acts rather in the character of an ai’bitrator. And this court, therefore, cannot regard the facts so found as ’judicially determined in the court below, nor examine the questions of law, as if those facts had been conclusively determined by a jury or settled by the the admission of the parties. Nor can any exception be taken to an opinion of the court upon the admission or rejection of testimony, or upon any other question of law which may grow out of the evidence, unless a jury was actually impaneled, and the exception reserved while they were still at the bar. The statute which gives the exception in a trial at common law gives it only in such cases. And as this court cannot regard the facts found by the judge as having been judicially determined in the court below, there are no facts before us upon which questions of law may legally and judicially have arisen in the inferior court, and no questions, therefore, open to our revision as an appellate tribunal. Consequently, as the Circuit Court had jurisdiction of the subject-matter and the parties, and there is no question of law or fa”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Ford v. Grimmett

3. ““By the act of March 3, 1865, c. 80, § 4, re-enacted in the Revised Statutes, it is provided that issues of fact in civil cases may be tried and determined by the circuit court, without the intervention of a jury, whenever the parties, or their attorneys of record, file a 'stipulation in writing, with the clerk of the court, waiving a jury; that the finding of the court upon the facts shall have the same effect as the verdict of a jury; and that its rulings in the progress of the trial, when excepted to at the time, and presented by bill of exceptions, may be reviewed by this court upon error or appeal. 13 Stat. 501 ; Rev. St. §§ 649, 700. Before the passage of this statute, it had been settled by repeated decisions that in any action at law in which the parties waived a trial by jury, and submitted the facts to the determination of the circuit court upon the evidence, its judgment was valid, but that this court had no authority to revise its opinion upon the admission or rejection of testimony, or upon any other question of law growing out of the evidence, and therefore, when no other error appeared on the record, must affirm the judgment. Guild v. Frontin, 18 How. 135 ; Kelsey v. Forsyth, 21 How. 85 ; Campbell v. Boyreau, 21 How. 223 . The reason for this, as stated by Chief Justice Taney in Campbell v. Boyreau, was that, ‘by the established and familiar rules and principles which govern common-law proceedings, no question of law can he reviewed and re-examined in an appell”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Duncan v. Atchison, T. & S. F. R.