Carey v. Bilby’s Empirical Analysis
129 F. 203 · 1904
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently April 1963
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 3 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 Lovejoy v. Murray · Gilbert v. . Finch · Abb v. Northern Pacific Railway Co. · Ellis v. Esson · Sloan v. Herrick
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is an old and well-established rule of law that the release of a cause of action as against one of two or more joint tort-feasors or joint obligors operates as a release of all. This is upon the theory that, when one has received full compensation for a wrong, no matter from which wrongdoer or from what source, the law will not permit him to recover further damages. Lovejoy v. Murray, 3 Wall. 1 , 17, 18 L. Ed. 129 . When a release of a cause of action for a tort is given by the injured party to one of two or more persons who committed the wrong, the release is construed most strongly against the party executing it. The law indulges in the presumption that the release was given in full satisfaction for the injury, and upon a sufficient consideration, and will,not permit the presumption to be overcome by oral proof to the contrary. Ellis v. Esson, 50 Wis. 138 , 6 N. W. 518 , 520, 36 Am. Rep. 830 ; Bronson v. Fitzhugh, 1 Hill [N. Y.] 185, 186. Sometimes, however, as in the case in hand, a release executed in favor of one wrongdoer is accompanied with the reservation of the right to sue others who were jointly concerned in the wrong, and in such cases the question has frequently arisen, how shall such an instrument be interpreted? Shall the reservation of the right to sue others be ignored, and the instrument treated as raising a conclusive presumption that full compensation for the wrong has been made, as though it were a technical release under seal, or shall the reservatio”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.