Hettinger v. McMahon’s Empirical Analysis
1964
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently December 2000
13 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
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"The real question raised in this controversy is whether or not the appellants were sufficiently charged with the knowledge of what they were required to do in order to comply with the decree of the court. Without doubt obedience of a court order must be secured, and to secure such obedience is the usual function of a proceeding for contempt. However, courts should be explicit and precise in their commands and should only then be strict in exacting compliance. "On the other hand, if a court order directed to litigants is too general and appears too burdensome and uncertain in its scope the aggrieved parties should petition the court for modification, clarification or construction of the order, and if they fail to do so they act at their own peril. However, we are satisfied that this rule must be applied with great caution in contempt matters where severe penalties can be pronounced."”
2 later decisions 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.