Brown v. Scott’s Empirical Analysis
1922
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 6 district · 25 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 36 later decisions — most recently March 1975 · most notably Pretlow v. Pretlow (1941), 25 Md. App. 303 - Security Construction Co. v. Maietta (1975)
3 federal appellate · 6 district · 25 state decisions — followed in 11 states
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 Di Lorenzo v. . Di Lorenzo · State v. Mosca · Ridgely v. Ridgely · Lyndon v. Lyndon · Le Brun v. Le Brun ex rel. Randall
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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The public policy of this state, evidenced by the statutes, the decisions, or the general consensus of opinion, does not regard a fraudulent marriage ceremony as sacred and irrevocable by judicial action; it does not encourage the practice of fraud in such cases by investing a formal marriage, entered into in consequence of deceit, with all the force and validity of an honest marriage. While marriage is a contract attended with many important and peculiar features in which the state is interested, and while it is one of the fundamental elements of social welfare, its transcendent importance would seem to demand that wily and designing people should find it difficult to successfully perpetrate fraud and deceit as inducements to the marriage relation, rather than that such base attempts should be regarded as of trivial importance and be wholly disregarded by the courts. Unhappy and unfortunate marriages ought not to be encouraged. Sch. Dom. Rel. § 24. The successful perpetration of fraud is not deemed to be a subject for judicial encouragement (Lyman v. Lyman [ 97 A. 312 ] 90 Conn. 399, 411 [L. R. A. 1916E, 643]), nor is the court authorized to legislate in favor of such a policy.” “ * * * Whether a party to a marriage is prevented from impeaching its validity on account of fraud, by his lack of sufficient diligence in attempting to ascertain the truth or by his ‘blind credulity’ (2 Kent Comm. 77) in representations which prove to be false, presents a question of fact, which i”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Raia v. Raia““ When in English law fraud is spoken of as a ground for avoiding a marriage, this does not include such fraud as induces a consent, but is limited to such fraud as procures the appearance without the reality of consent.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Pretlow v. Pretlow
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.