Sterrett v. Wright’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 3 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““When one person receives anything of value from another, the law implies a promise that he who receives it will pay what it is worth. But this rule has its exceptions. A son, for instance, cannot charge for labour bestowed about his father’s business, and a parent, or’ one standing in loco parentis, cannot recover for the maintenance of a child without distinct and clear proof of an agreement to pay. Why do we make this exception to the general rule ? One reason is, the policy which forbids us to lend any countenance to family disputes, and which commands us to encourage and foster the harmony and confidence which ought to subsist between parents and their children while dwelling together under the same roof. We have another ground for it. There is a natural presumption that these mutual services are rendered by different members of the same family from a better motive than the expectation of mere pecuniary rewards. The law, unless upon overruling considerations of policy, will not presume that to be true which common experience shows to be generally false. No contract can therefore be implied to pay for those things which it is the universal custom to give gratuitously. A person who stops at a tavern is liable to an action if he does not discharge the reckoning before he goes away; but one who visits his relative incurs no obligation to pay for his entertainment; the difference being that in the former ease a charge is always made, and in the latter nobody ever thinks of a ”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Hillman v. Commissioner · Hillman v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue