Smith v. Clark’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

36 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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It has been held in many cases that the taking of the adverse party’s deposition amounts to calling him as a witness whether the deposition is introduced in evidence or not. Some of these cases were reviewed by the Oklahoma Court in Cox v. Gettys, 53 Okla. 58 , 156 Pac. 892 . The court held that the incompetency of testimony imposed by the dead man’s statute was waived even though the deposition was never actually filed, saying: ‘Any other construction of the statute would enable one party to search the conscience of his adversary, drag to light his private papers and other evidence, and then repudiate the result, if the experiment proved unsatisfactory.’ The court also approved the following language by the Missouri court in Rice v. Waddill, 168 Mo. 99 , 67 S.W. 605 : ‘Can it differ in principle that, in this case, defendants took plaintiff’s deposition, had it duly certified and thereby, in the language of counsel, “heard what she said and that was all he wanted to know,” and then suppressed the deposition; whereas, in the cases cited, the deposition was similarly taken and filed, but not used by the party taking it? Can a party thus trifle with the machinery of the law and avail himself of it if it suits his purposes, and reject it if it does not, and yet escape all the consequences of his acts? We hold he cannot.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Hood v. Welch