State v. Stevens’s Empirical Analysis
1925
Citation profile
9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently March 1976
9 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 State v. Bailey · Hull v. Seattle, Renton & Southern Railway Co. · Halverson v. Seattle Electric Co. · Elderkin v. Peterson · State v. Johnson
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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““. . . But the argument mistakes the rule. It is the rule, no doubt, that books of account are the best evidence of the matters which they contain, but where the inquiry is as to the state of the account of a depositor with the bank they are not necessarily the best evidence. It is competent to show by oral testimony that a person has a deposit with a bank, or has had such a deposit and has withdrawn it, regardless of the condition of the bank’s books, and any person who knows the fact and is otherwise competent to be a witness may testify orally thereto. Indeed, books of account have ever been regarded as a species of secondary evidence, admitted as primary evidence because of the necessities of the case, and are not held to preclude other competent evidence of the same fact. Greenleaf on Evidence (14th ed.), §117; 16 C.J., p. 615; Elderkin v. Peterson, 8 Wash. 674 (1.c.685), 36 Pac. 1089 ; Hull v. Seattle, Renton & Southern R. Co., 60 Wash. 162 , 110 Pac. 804 ; Halverson v. Seattle Electric Co., 35 Wash. 600 , 77 Pac. 1058 .””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““ . . . That the appellant had no funds in the bank at the time the transaction with Goodrich occurred, is the only inference that can be drawn from the witness’s testimony as a whole, and it was elsewhere shown that the appellant several times admitted that he was without funds in the bank at the time the check was delivered to Goodrich. Nor was a formal presentation of the check necessary to establish the fact of want of funds, or to establish the fact that the check would not be paid. . . . ””
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.