Ceresia v. Mitchell’s Empirical Analysis
1951
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently October 2009
15 state decisions — followed in 10 states
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 Beit v. Beit · Fleckenstein Bros. v. Fleckenstein · Edwards v. Mullin · Metropolitan Ice Co. v. Ducas · Hill v. Central West Public Service 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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““An agreement restricting competition may be perfectly reasonable as to a part of the territory included within the restriction but unreasonable as to the rest. Will the courts enforce such an agreement in part while holding the remainder invalid? It renders no service to say that the answer depends upon whether or not the contract is ‘divisible.’ ‘Divisibility’ is a term that has no general and invariable definition; instead the term varies so much with the subject-matter involved and the purposes in view that its use either as an aid to decision or in the statement of results tends to befog the real issue. “With respect to partial illegality, the real issue is whether partial enforcement is possible without injury to the public and without injustice to the parties themselves. It is believed that such enforcement is quite possible in the great majority of cases. If a seller whose business and good will do not extend beyond the city limits of Trenton promises not to open a competing business anywhere within the state of New Jersey, the restriction is much greater than is reasonable. This is a good reason for refusing to enjoin the seller from doing business in Newark; but it is not a good reason for permitting him to open up a competing store within the same block in Trenton. “In a good many cases it was held that if the contract itself indicated no geographical line between the reasonable and the unreasonable, it was ‘indivisible’ and illegal as a whole. Thus, if a seller pr”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“"[I]t has been held in Kentucky that an agreement in restraint of trade is reasonable if, on consideration of the subject, nature of the business, situation of the parties and cireumstances of the particular case, the restriction is such only as to afford fair protection to the interests of the covenantee and is not so large as to interfere with the public interests or impose undue hardship on the party restricted."”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[I]n Kentucky, ... an agreement in restraint of trade is reasonable if, on consideration of the subject, nature of the business, situation of the parties and circumstances of the particular case, the restriction is such only as to afford fair protection to the covenantee and is not so large as to interfere with the public interests or impose undue hardship on the party restricted.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Vencor, Inc. v. Webb
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.