Fite v. Fite’s Empirical Analysis
1961
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently December 2010
10 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.
Relationships
Relies on Brand v. Williams · Anderson v. Anderson · Arkansas National Bank v. Martin · Patton v. Brown-Moore Lumber Co.
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“* * * The action is not dependent upon an express promise, and, as many authorities say, not even upon one implied in fact, but it is maintainable in all cases where one person has received money or its equivalent under such circumstances that, in equity and good conscience, he ought not to retain it, and, ex aecuo et bono, it belongs to another. And it is said that this is so, irrespective of whether the money was received from the plaintiff or from a third person. 2 R. C. L. 778. The authorities are practically unanimous in holding that, if one has money belonging to another, which, in equity and good conscience, he ought not to retain, it may be recovered, although there was no privity and no express contract or agreement. * * *”
2 later decisions 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.