Vigil v. Haber’s Empirical Analysis
1994
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently May 2012
16 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on 127 Wis. 2d 318 - Brown v. Thomas · 107 Wis. 2d 492 - Dixon v. Dixon · 223 N.J. Super. 344 - Aronow v. Silver · Gaden v. Gaden · State Ex Rel. DuBois v. Ryan
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“On principle, an engagement ring is given, not alone as a symbol of the sta tus of the two persons as engaged, the one to the other, but as a symbol or token of their pledge and agreement to marry. As such pledge or gift, the condition is implied that if both parties abandon the projected marriage, the sole cause of the gift, it should be returned. Similarly, if the woman, who has received the ring in token of her promise, unjustifiably breaks her promise, it should be returned. When the converse situation occurs, and the giver of the ring, betokening his promise, violates his word, it would seem that a similar result should follow, i.e., he should lose, not gain, rights to the ring. In addition, had he not broken his promise, the marriage would follow, and the ring would become the wife’s absolutely. The man could not then recover the ring. The only difference between that situation, and the facts at bar, is that the man has broken his promise. How, on principle, can the courts aid him, under such circumstances, to regain a ring which he could not regain, had he kept his promise? No man should take advantage of his own wrong. Of course, were the breaking of the engagement to be justifiable, there would be no violation of the agreement legally, and a different result might follow.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.