Smith v. Wells’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In the first place, the court erred in sustaining the motion to elect, since the cause of action as set out in the petition was exclusively based upon the violations of the lease contract. It is true that the pleader in describing the way and manner those violations were made employed terms usually descriptive of tortious actions; such as “negligently,” “carelessly,” and “willfully”; but they did not alter the character and nature of the suit as one to recover for violations of the contract. Nowhere in the petition was it intimated that the injuries sued for were the result of a tortious trespass upon plaintiff’s property by defendant. If defendant’s contract obligations were violated “willfully” by Mm, or because of Ms failure to exercise the proper care to observe them, and, therefore, they were violated because of Ms “negligence” in that regard, the nature of plaintiff’s right of action against him for damages produced would not be converted thereby from a cause of action ex contractu to one sounding in tort. On the contrary, the cause of action would still be, and nevertheless continue to be, one of ex contractu. The motion to elect was no doubt prompted in order to ascertain whether or not the proper venue of the action had been selected by the plaintiff, since if the injuries were of a tortious nature resulting in part of injury to real estate, as set out in the petition, then subsection 4 of § 62 of our Civil Code of Practice would localize it in the county where the ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Ferrill v. Collins