Niedermeyer v. Dusenbery’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 6 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “There is no doubt that decedent's necessity to defend the action caused him damage more than two years prior to the commencement of the present action. It is not so clear, however, that at that time it could yet be determined that his expense of defense was caused by negligent advice by defendants. In many situations the closeness of the legal questions involved would make it impossible to ascertain until the ultimate determination of the case whether it was brought as the result of the attorney's bad advice or whether it was the result of a misapprehension on the part of the party who sued as to his legal rights. In the present instance, if decedent had won the case brought against him, he would not normally be in a position to claim that negligent advice on the part of the present defendants was a cause of his expense of defense. When this case is tried, it might be shown that the outcome of the claim made against decedent was so crystal clear that upon securing legal advice decedent immediately knew either that he had a valid claim against defendants or that he did not; or, it might appear that no one could tell for certain whether the claim was good or bad. There is nothing about the filing of the claim against decedent together with the passage of any arbitrary lengths of time which, as a matter of law, demonstrates that decedent should have been aware at a time which makes the claim vulnerable to the statute that his necessity to defend the action was caused by defendan”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 189 N.J. Super. 368 - Mant v. Gillespie