Maples v. Maples’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Here, the first wife, having been advised that her husband had married another woman in 1917, waited until after her husband was dead and until 1931 before proceeding to have the divorce decree vacated. We feel constrained to hold that she waited too long, and is barred by her laches.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Self v. Self · 518 So. 2d 482 - Succession of Bickham

2. “There are excellent reasons why judgments and matrimonial causes, whether of nullity, dissolution or separation, should be more stable, certainly not less, than in others, and so our courts hold. The matrimonial status of the parties draws with it and after it so many collateral rights and interests of third persons that uncertainty and fluctuation in it would be greatly detrimental to the public. And, particularly to an innocent person who has contracted a marriage on faith of the decree of the court, the calamity of having it reversed and the marriage made void is passed estimation. These considerations have great weight with the courts, added whereto there are statutes in some of the States according a special inviolability to such judgments.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Self v. Self