Breen v. Peck’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 federal appellate · 10 district · 69 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 97 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The rule’s results are incongruous. More often than otherwise they are unjust and unintended. Wrongdoers who do not make or share in making reparation are discharged, while one willing to right the wrong and no more guilty bears the whole loss, [footnote omitted] Compromise is stifled, first, by inviting all to wait for the others to settle and, second, because claimants cannot accept less than full indemnity from one when doing that discharges all. Many, not knowing this, accept less only to find lat» er they have walked into a trap. The rule shortchanges the claimant or overcharges the person who settles, as the recurring volume and pattern of litigation show. Finally, it is anomalous in legal theory, giving tort-feasors an advantage wholly inconsistent with the nature of their liability.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Adams v. Dion · McMillen v. Klingensmith

2. “`* * * § 11 Intention rule; illustrative cases. The modern view repudiates the common-law rule under which the release of one tort-feasor automatically discharges the liability of the others, and makes the intention of the parties to the release the test of whether it effects the release of other tortfeasors who are not parties thereto.'”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Community School District of Postville v. Gordon N. Peterson, Inc. · Adams v. Dion

3. ““* * * In the United States the English release rule has been under vigorous attack for many years. In 1923 Dean Wigmore referred to it as a surviving relic which was based on false logic and, although accepted by many courts, was fortunately being repudiated in some states by judicial decisions and in others by legislative action. See Wigmore, ‘Release to One Joint-Tortfeasor,’ 17 Ill. L. Rev. 563 (1923). In his 1930 edition of Cooley on Torts, Professor Throckmorton referred to the growing tendency on the part of American courts to replace it with the ‘sound and reasonable’ rule that unless the parties so intended a release should not absolve strangers thereto. See Throckmorton’s Cooley on Torts, §80 (1930). In 1941 Dean Prosser referred to the rule as ‘at best an antiquated survival of an arbitrary common law procedural concept’ and suggested that a plaintiff should never be compelled to surrender his cause of action against any wrongdoer ‘unless he has intentionally done so, or unless he has received such full compensation that he is no longer entitled to maintain it.’ See Prosser, Torts, 1109, 1110 (1941); Prosser, Torts, 244-245 (2d ed. 1955). Cf. Prosser, ‘Joint Torts and Several Liability,’ 25 Calif. L. Rev. 413 , 424 (1937). In 1951 Professor Corbin’s work on contracts included devastating comments on the English release rule in the field of torts as well as contracts (4 Corbin, Contracts, §§931-935 (1951)), and in 1956 Professors Harper and James joined in advocatin”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Bjork v. Chrysler Corp. · Price v. Baker