Briggs v. Briggs’s Empirical Analysis
1870
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 34 later decisions — most recently May 1952 · most notably Masonic Mutual Benefit Ass'n v. Beck (1881), In re Estate of Flint (1893)
1 federal appellate · 33 state decisions — followed in 12 states
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.
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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Our conclusion upon the whole case is that such a case has been made out as to warrant a divorce. The statute provides that the divorce may be decreed ‘for the cause of extreme cruelty, whether practiced by personal violence or by any other-means/ We are not required, therefore, to look solely at the violence employed by defendant, but in disposing of the case may properly have regard to the general result of his conduct. That conduct is properly to be characterized by the result which it has produced upon the marriage relation and upon the comfort of the complainant therein. A single act of causeless violence may be overlooked if its consequences are evanescent, and leave the relations of the parties substantially undisturbed ; but a long-continued course of conduct, which, without the fault of the wife, results in making the marriage relation unendurable and in driving her from her husband’s house, is clearly, we think, a case of extreme cruelty within the meaning of the statute. In its effect upon the marriage relation, cruel conduct, which has effectually destroyed it, cannot be regarded as other than extreme.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““He had no knowledge upon the subject except what he obtained in the course of his professional emloyment, and the case appears to be directly within the statute. . . .' We do not understand the information here referred to, to he confined to communications made by the patient to the physician, but regard it as protecting, with the veil of privilege, whatever, in order to enable, the physician to prescribe, was disclosed to any of his senses, and which in any way was brought to his knowledge for that purpose.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.