Rosseau v. . Rouss’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 89 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 97 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Thus the evidence relied upon to establish the contract is, first, the testimony of the mother, who tried to swear $100,000 into the pocket of her own child; and, second, the testimony of witnesses who swear to the admissions of a dead man. The former is dangerous, the latter is weak, and neither should be acted upon without great caution. We have repeatedly held that such a contract must not only be certain and definite, and founded upon an adequate consideration, but also that it must be established by the clearest and most convincing evidence. We have been emphatic in condemning these agreements, because they ‘have become so frequent in recent years as to cause alarm.’ We havé been rigid .and exacting as to the sufficiency of the evidence to establish them, and have condemned the proof thereof ‘through parol evidence given by interested witnesses.’ As ‘such contracts are easily fabricated and hard to disprove, because the sole contracting party on one side is always dead when the question arises,’ we have declared that they ‘should be in writing, and the writing should be produced, or, if ever based upon parol evidence, it should be given or corroborated in all substantial particulars by disinterested witnesses.’ Hamlin v. Stevens, 177 N. Y. 39 ; Mahaney v. Carr, 175 N. Y. 454 ; Ide v. Brown, 178 N. Y. 26 ; Edson v. Parsons, 155 N. Y. 555 ; Shakespeare v. Markham, 72 N. Y. 400 .””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Cromwell v. Simons