Sutton v. Leib’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 18 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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““. . . This is in accord with Illinois decisions which have consistently held that a void marriage, as distinguished from a voidable one, is an absolute nullity for all purposes, and no judicial proceedings or decree are required to establish its invalidity. ... It follows that such a void marriage would be ineffectual to alter the marital status of either party to it, and that one who participated in it, if otherwise unmarried, would ‘remain unmarried.’ We find no escape from this conclusion • in the holding of the Illinois court in Lehmann v. Lehmann, 225 Ill. App. 513 , also referred to by the Supreme Court, since that case, like the Sleicher case, involved a voidable rather than a void marriage. Once it is established, as the Supreme Court established in this case, that the marriage was void from its inception in Nevada where it was performed, because Nevada declares bigamous marriages void, then it seems simple to apply the Illinois law, that a void marriage is a nullity which creates no rights and duties between the parties and effects no change in the marital status of either. That being true, it cannot be relied upon by a third party, as defendant here, to reheve him of a continuing obligation which was never interrupted by the inefficacious marriage ceremony in Nevada.” (pp. 164, 165.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Johnson County National Bank & Trust Co. v. Bach