Dusbabek v. Bowers’s Empirical Analysis
1934
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently October 2020 · most notably Silk v. Phillips Petroleum Co. (1988), Miller v. Troy Laundry MacHinery Co., Inc. (1936)
2 federal appellate · 27 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 Snell v. Union Sawmill Co. · City of Oklahoma City v. Frank McMaster · Holcomb & Hoke Mfg. Co. v. Jones · Cottrill v. Krum · Springer v. . Bien
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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Every man or woman, even though illiterate, is presumed to know the contents of a written instrument signed by him; but no presumption of knowledge will stand in the way of a charge of fraud made in regard to the contents of the writing. No doubt it would be imprudent, in a sense, not to read or to require the reading of an instrument before signing or accepting it; indeed the courts would turn a deaf ear to a man who sought to get rid of a contract solely on the ground that its terms were not what he supposed them to be. But the courts would not refuse to listen , on the contrary they would give relief, where a plaintiff charged fraud upon the defendant in reading the contract to him, or in stating its nature or terms ; and also in leaving out terms agreed upon, or in inserting terms not agreed upon. This would obviously be true of cases in which the complaining party could not read, or could read only with difficulty, or in which a printed document was concerned containing much fine print . But the rule is not confined to such cases; on the contrary it is very general.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Where a party 'seeks to enforce an instrument against the person who signed it, and the signer charges such person with fraud in inducing him to sign said instrument on account of false and fraudulent representations concerning the contents of such instrument, and where the person signing such instrument acts upon such positive representations of fact, notwithstanding the fact that the means of knowledge were directly at hand and open to the person signing such instrument, and where said representation are of the character to induce action upon the person signing said instrument, and, in fact, did induce the signing of such instrument, such inducement constitutes fraud and it is sufficient to vitiate such instrument, and it becomes immaterial whether the person signing such instrument was negligent in failing to use diligence or ordinary prudence to discover the falsity of such representation.”
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.