Kneettle v. . Newcomb’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

43 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 46 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The statutes which allow a debtor, being a householder and having a family for which he provides, to retain, as against the legal remedies of his creditors, certain articles of prime necessity, to a limited amount, are based upon views of policy and humanity which would he frustrated if an agreement like that contained in these notes, entered into in connection with the principal contract, could be sustained. * * * The law was designed to protect him against his own improvidence in giving such consent. The statutes contain many examples of legislation based upon the same motives. The laws against usury, those which forbid imprisonment for debt, and those which allow a redemption after the sale of land on execution, are of this class. So of the principle originally introduced in courts of equity, and which has been long established in all courts, to the effect that, if one convey land as security for a debt, and agree that his deed shall become absolute if payment is not made by the day, he shall still be entitled to redeem on paying the debt and interest; and so, also, with executory contracts without consideration to make gifts, and the like. In these cases the law seeks to mitigate the consequence of men’s thoughtlessness and improvidence, and it does not, I think, allow its policy to be evaded by any language which may be inserted in the contract It is not. always equally careful to shield persons from those acts which, instead of being promissory in their character and p”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In re Boone