Brown v. Sutton’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 federal appellate · 1 district · 31 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 61 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““As Mrs. Sutton was not competent as a witness to establish a promise on the part of Mr. Kenyon to convey the property to her, * * * and as Mr. Sutton, being her husband, was also incompetent, it can be readily seen, in the absence of any written agreement upon the subject or any correspondence between the parties, which could not reasonably be expected to exist, as they were nearly always living together, that it is almost impossible to prove a direct verbal promise from Mr. Kenyon to her in regard to that matter. Any such promise must be largely inferred from the situation and circumstances of the parties, and must depend almost wholly on verbal statements made by Mr. Kenyon to others.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Cromwell v. Simons · Hanson v. Urner

2. ““That there was no oral contract of the deceased, enforcible in character, which would keep from being operative the Statute of Frauds requiring said contract either to be in writing or to be so substantially performed as that the failure to enforce same would work an inequity upon the party seeking specific performance. “That the occupancy of the premises by the plaintiff from the beginning of such occupancy until the death of the deceased was in no sense a loss, damage, or inconvenience to the plaintiff, but on the contrary, inured to his benefit. “The'alleged promise of the deceased to give the property to the plaintiff never affected the real estate in question or the title to it in such a manner as would have enabled the plaintiff in a Court of Equity during the lifetime of the deceased James W. Johnson to have prevented him, the deceased Johnson, from disposing of the property in any way he may have deemed proper. “That the plaintiff had never entered into any such full or exclusive possession of the premises in question, nor performed on his part any such portion of an alleged parol contract as to take the case out of the operation of the Statute of Frauds.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Slaughter v. Madison

3. ““Here is at once the promise and the consideration for it, amounting to an agreement stated in Mr. Kenyon’s [the deceased’s] own language, with all the clearness of detail necessary to a contract.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Price v. Lloyd