Gerrish v. Chambers’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

20 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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “‘Fraud in equity includes all wilful or intentional acts, omissions or concealments by which an undue or unconscientious advantage is taken over another. Undue influence is a species of constructive fraud. Whenever two persons have come into such a relation that confidence is necessarily reposed by one and the influence which naturally grows out of that confidence is possessed by the other and this confidence is abused or the influence is exerted to obtain an advantage at the expense of the confiding party, the person so availing himself of his or her position will not be permitted to retain the advantage. The term “fiduciary or confidential relation” embraces both technical fiduciary relations and those informal relations which exist whenever one person relies on and trusts in another. And the rule is that whenever a fiduciary or confidential relation exists between the parties to a deed, gift, contract or the like, the law implies a condition of superiority held by one of the parties over the other, so that in every transaction between them by which the superior party obtains a possible benefit equity presumes the existence of undue influence and the invalidity of the transaction, and casts upon that party the burden of proof of showing affirmatively by clear evidence that he or she acted with entire fairness and the other party acted independently, with full knowledge and of his own volition free from undue influence.’”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Sacre v. Victor L. Sacre People's Savings Bank