Reeves v. Sargeant’s Empirical Analysis
1942
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently August 2018
12 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.
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is well settled that while contracts in general restraint of trade are against public policy and void, yet those' in partial restraint, founded upon a valid consideration and reasonable in their operation, are valid and binding. The test which generally is laid down by which it may be determined whether a contract is reasonable is whether it affords a fair protection for the interests of the party in whose favor it is made, without being so large in its operation as to interfere with the interests of the public.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In determining whether a contract in partial restraint of trade is reasonable, the court will look to the whole subject matter of the contract, the kind and character of business, its location, the purpose to be accomplished by the restriction, and all circumstances which show the intention of the parties and which must have entered into the making of the contract. ... In the case before us, the restraint is limited as to space and territory, and is to run during the lifetime of the defendant. It is only as to the time feature that the * defendant objects. In determining whether a contract is reasonable in respect to the length of time during which the restriction is to run, as applied to a case like the one before us, it would seem that the fair and full protection of the business, good will and trade name which the vendee has purchased and paid for, may well be accepted as the test. It follows naturally that each case must be governed in the main by its own facts .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Sargeant] successfully contended in the lower court that the contract being one in partial restraint of trade is void and against public policy, because the duration of the restraint upon the defendant is unreasonable, in that it is without time limit.”
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.