Flint v. Coffin’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 1 state decisions

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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The filing of a petition to remove a cause from a state to a federal court does not amount to a general appearance. Wabash Western Railway v. Brow, 164 U. S. 271 , 17 S. Ct. 126 , 41 L. Ed. 431 ; International Text-Book Co. v. Heart, 136 F. 129 , 69 C. C. A. 127 . The paper filed with the clerk by counsel for Flint, advising that official that they so appeared, was simply a notice that they, in effectuating the removal from the state court, would file the record of the cause in the federal court. That court was not then in session, and surely the requirement of the clerk, that counsel should file in his office a memorandum indicating for whom they appeared, cannot he construed as a general appearance, when what was intended is kept in view — the lodging of a record which had been removed from a state court, by a proceeding that was of itself a special appearance. Nor can it be consistently held that the resistance to the motion to remand was a general appearance. All of those things that were essential to secure the final lodgment of the ease on the docket and records of the eourt ..below were properly dono under the special appearance made in the state eourt, when the petition for removal was filed. To hold otherwise would, in the light of the record of this cause, be painfully technical, would do violence to the evident intention of counsel, which was to challenge the jurisdiction of the eourt on the ground stated in the motion to dismiss, and would impair the rights inten”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Pattiz v. Semple