Stewart v. Butler’s Empirical Analysis
1899
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently October 1964
12 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 H. B. Claflin & Co. v. Hamlin · 5 Abb. Pr. 325 - Lowber v. Mayor of New York
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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““A leading case is Bank v. Pooley, 54 Law J. Q. B. 449. The action had been brought by Pooley to recover damages for the alleged wrongful acts of the bank in fraudulently procuring the plaintiff to be adjudicated a bankrupt. Two former actions by Pooley, not against the bank, but against other defendants, for whose actions the bank was responsible, had been dismissed, and Pooley had failed to pay the costs thereon. A motion was made to dismiss the action as vexatious and harassing, or to stay proceedings until the costs of the former actions had been paid. The court below does not seem to have given much consideration to the motion to dismiss, but the house of lords placed its decision squarely upon the proposition that the court had inherent power to.dismiss the action as frivolous, and should do so. The lord chancellor, in the course of his opinion, said: “ Tn the view which I take of this case, it is not necessary to determine whether the view of the facts taken by the court of appeal, that the two actions brought by the respondent were not substantially between the same parties, was right or not. The judges of the court of appeal do not seem to have addressed themselves (and I think that your lordships would presume that the course of the argument did not really direct them) to the other questions, whether the action should be dismissed altogether as frivolous and vexatious.... In my opinion, the order which the court of appeal ought to have made was to dismiss the action”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““. . . this is a baseless, vexatious, and harassing action, begun with no hope or expectation of ultimate success, but only in the hope that the defendants may find it easier and cheaper to buy off the plaintiff and his attorneys than to contest the action.””
1 later decision 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.