Gibson v. Hibbard’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ The question of the validity of this draft would arise primarily between the drawer and the holder. The drawer might have insisted upon its invalidity, if he saw fit to do so. But I do not understand that any person has such a vested right to have his contract declared void for want of compliance with some statutory requisite as will preclude the legislature from dispensing with the requisite and affirming the contract which he has attempted to make. A right to avoid one’s contract because the party himself has neglected to perform the duty he owed to the government in respect to it is not ‘ property,’ and the contractor is not in a position to complain when, for the furtherance of justice, the government allows the other party to perform the duty, and hold him to his contract. Retrospective laws of a similar character are by no means uncommon, and where they only give effect to the intentions of the parties they are not often unjust. See Satterlee v. Matthewson, 2 Pet. (U. S.) 380; Wilkinson v. Leland, 2 Pet. (U. S.) 627. And it would be difficult to imagine a lav/ of this kind less objectionable than this. The purpose of the original act was to enforce, by a penalty, the payment of national dues. In many cases the law operated harshly upon persons not yet accustomed to the new mode of doing business. The subsequent act, instead of operating unjustly upon any one, simply relieved the holder of the paper from the penal consequences on the proper stamp being affixed. Instead”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Lohrstorfer v. Lohrstorfer