Kramer v. . Old’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 1 district · 30 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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The courts in later years have disregarded the old rules by which it was sometimes attempted arbitrarily to fix by measurement the geographical area over which a contract in partial restraint of trade might be made to extend, and to prescribe a limit of time beyond which it could not be made to operate. The modern doctrine is founded upon the basic principle that one who, by his skill and industry, builds up a business, acquires a property at least in the good-will of his patrons, which is the product of his own efforts ( Cowan v. Fairbrother , 118 N.C. 406 ), and has the fundamental right to dispose of the fruits of his own labor, subject only to such restrictions as are imposed for the protection of society, either by express enactments of law or by public policy. ( Hughes v. Hodges , 102 N.C. 239 ; Bruce v. Strickland , 81 N.C. 267 .) But the property that one thus creates by skill, or talent and industry, is not marketable unless the owner is at liberty to sell his right of competition to the full extent of the field from which he derives his profits, and for a reasonable length of time. . . . The test of the reasonableness of the territorial limit covered by such contracts is involved in the question whether the area described in the contract is greater than it is necessary to make it in order to protect the purchaser from competition in his efforts to hold and to get the full benefits of the business or right of competition bought by him,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Sea Food Co. v. . Way