Godwin v. Kerns’s Empirical Analysis
1941
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 43 later decisions — most recently August 2013 · most notably Hubacek v. Ennis State Bank (1958), Amos v. Coffey (1984)
3 federal appellate · 34 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 Crafts v. Broadway National Bank · Barrett v. Vaughan & Co. · Ward v. Bank of Pocahontas · White v. Commonwealth · Nottingham v. Farmers & Merchants Trust Bank
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 43 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[P]arol evidence of prior or contemporaneous oral negotiations or stipulations is inadmissible to vary, contradict, add to, or explain the terms of a complete, unambiguous, unconditional written instrument.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It may be confidently affirmed,, as the settled law of this State, that where a negotiable note or other unconditional promise to pay at a stipulated time is regular upon its face, and is delivered to the payee as a valid and binding obligation for ever so short a time, no contemporaneous parol agreement can be set up to show that payment was not to be demanded at maturity, or until attached collateral had been exhausted, or upon the happening of any other subsequent event not mentioned in the note itself. All such efforts have as their end to change or vary the terms of the written contract, which we think is contrary to the great weight of authority, and is clearly in conflict with the previous decisions of this court.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““To allow it to be shown by parol evidence that the note was to be paid or reduced by payments made to the holder from other securities held by the holder, or to be paid or reduced in value upon the happening of any subsequent event not mentioned in the note itself, would be to alter, vary, and contradict the express terms of a written contract.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.