168 Ind. App. 586 - Fitzgerald v. Brown’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 21 later decisions — most recently July 2007
21 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 Soft Water Utilities, Inc. v. Le Fevre · 165 Ind. App. 98 - Moe v. Koe · Cantwell v. Cantwell · 152 Ind. App. 665 - Kreczmer v. Allied Construction Company · Mordhurst v. Ft. Wayne & Southwestern Traction Co.
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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘In general, the party seeking the aid of equity to enjoin a judgment at law against him must not only show some ground for interference, within the doctrine of the text, but must also show that he has a good and sufficient defense to the cause of action, so that on a re-examination and retrial the result would be different.’ [Pomeroy’s Equity Jurisprudence (5th Ed.) § 1364, p. 985.] * * * * * * The rule requiring a meritorious defense to be shown before a judgment will be set aside, in a proceeding such as the one before us, is a reasonable condition interposed by courts of equity. This is not unreasonable to a defendant, for under the authorities the only showing such defendant need make to invoke the aid of equity in this respect is to indicate he has a prima facie meritorius [sic] defense to the judgment he seeks to set aside. This condition preliminary to equity’s taking juridiction is premised upon the ground that equity will not interfere with a judgment recovered at law, unless such judgment is unjust or unconscionable. There is a maxim that courts of equity will not do or require the doing of a vain or useless thing, yet there is nothing more useless or vain than the setting aside of a judgment although no defense to it exists. . . . Equity is also desirous of preventing circuity of action, and this purpose is served by equity’s refusal to upset a judgment when the defendant petition er had set forth nothing to indicate that if the cause were tried again on the mer”
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.