Wallace v. Finch’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The question of treble damages, however, stands on a different principle altogether. When this law gives single damages it has a single object, and that is to redress the injured party. But when the damages are to be trebled, the object is two-fold, namely: to redress the injury done, and also to punish the wrong-doer. Ho other explanation of these provisions is possible, and according to well settled rules, when a law is susceptible of penal applications in special cases, such applications of it ought to he closely confined to cases within its principle. How, when we come to interpret this statute, we must either hold that the legislature meant that any person however blameless in a moral point of view, who should be within the inculpatory words of the first section and not within the exact words of the saving provisions of the second section, should be punished; or on the contrary, that the legislature meant that the penal application should be made only in cases marked by wantonness, wilfulness, or evil design. And it is hardly admissible to impute the former purpose to the legislature. , Indeed, the nature of the limitations contained in the second section indicates very clearly that no such purpose was contemplated. Those limitations all point to the exclusion of the penal application where the trespass is not aggravated by bad faith or other positive blame, and they amount to a legislative intimation that the penal provisions were not intended to apply where punishment”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Gardner v. Lovegren

2. ““The witness was a farmer who had then resided in the vicinity of the property for several years, and was well acquainted with it. He owned a piece of land near these premises, and had known of the sale and purchase of lands near by. Nothing more was needed to show that he was competent to testify respecting the value of the premises.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. McCormick v. Bradbury