The John H. Pearson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““What ‘ the northern passage,’ as used in this contract, means, therefore, is either a question of fact, or a question of construction applicable to understood facts. If it is, as the court below says it appears to be, a term of art, which, taken by itself, without the aid of the testimony, is unintelligible, then its meaning in ‘the art’—the trade—is one of the material facts in the ease on which the rights of the parties depend, and it should have been found and put into the findings of fact which the circuit court was required by law to make. * * * If, in point of fact, there is no passage to which the name or description of ‘the northern ’ has been given in the trade, then the question becomes one of construction-, as applied to the known facts of the business. The inquiry is not as to which passage would he the quickest, or even the best, or which another contract would require of another vessel, but which is ‘ the northern passage, ’ within the meaning of this contract. The evident purpose of the libelants was to keep the vessel as far as possible in the coolest of the passages that those engaged in the trade were accustomed to take; because it is found as a fact in the case that a cool temperature is necessary to the preservation of the cargo, and that the coolest water is north of the Gulf Stream, owing to the fact that there is a cold current between it and the American coast, moving in an opposite direction.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Filiberto v. Taylor