Northwestern Mut Life Ins Co v. Muskegon Nat Bank’s Empirical Analysis
122 U.S. 501 · 1887
Citation profile
15 federal appellate · 2 district · 36 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 62 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 1967 · most notably In Re Newbern (1960), Dennis v. Dennis (1896)
15 federal appellate · 2 district · 36 state decisions — followed in 16 states
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 Railway Company v. McCarthy · Indianapolis and St Louis Railroad Company v. Horst · Samuel Kelly Citizen of New York v. James Jackson a Citizen of New Jersey · Laber v. Cooper
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 62 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The whole ease turned, so far as the jury was concerned, upon the true definition of the words, ‘habitually intemperate,’ taken in connection with the testimony on the subject at these two different periods. The plaintiff was not bound to prove that the assured was temperate or that he was a temperate man, but the defendant was bound to prove not only that Com-stock was intemperate at those periods, but that he was habitually so. This it was bound to do by such a preponderance of testimony as should satisfy the jury that at one of these periods or the other he was habitually intemperate. We do not know of any established legal definition of those words. As they relate to the customs and habits of men generally in regard to the use of intoxicating drinks, and as the observation and experience of one man on that subject is as good as another of equal capacity and opportunities, their true meaning and significance would seem to be a question addressed rather to the jury than to the court.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““We do not know of any established legal definition of those words. As-¡hoy relato io the customs and habits of men generally in regard to the use of intoxicating drinks, and ns the observation and experience of one man on that subject is as good as anollier of equal capacity and opportunities, their true meaning and signification would seem to be a question addressed mi her (o the jury than to the court. While there may be on the one hand such a clear case of intemperate habits as to justify the court in saying that sneli and such facts constitute a condition of habitual intemperance, or on the other such an entire absence of any proof, beyond an occasional indulgence in the use of ardent spirits, as to warrant the opposite conclusion, yet the main field of inquiry, and the determination of the question -within it, must be submitted to ihe jury, and the question on this submission must be decided by them.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“if you find that the habit and rule of a man's life is to indulge periodically and with frequency, and with increasing frequency and violence, in excessive fits of intemperance, such a use of liquor may properly cause the finding of habitual drunkenness.”
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.