Bates v. Southgate’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

33 federal appellate · 15 district · 109 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 178 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““As a matter of principle it is necessary to weigh the advantages of certainty in contractual relations against the harm and injustice that result from fraud. In obedience to the demands of a larger public policy the law long ago abandoned the position that a contract must be held sacred regardless of the fraud of one of the parties in procuring it. No one advocates a return to outworn conceptions. The same public policy that in general sanctions the avoidance of a promise obtained by deceit strikes down all attempts to circumvent that policy by means of contractual devices. In the realm of fact it is entirely possible for a party knowingly to agree that no representations have been made to him, while at the same time believing and relying upon representations which in fact have been made and in fact are false but for which he would not have made the agreement. To deny this possibility is to ignore the frequent instances in everyday experience where parties accept, often without critical examination, and act upon agreements containing somewhere within their four corners exculpatory clauses in one form or another, but where they do so, nevertheless, in reliance upon the honesty of supposed friends, the plausible and disarming statements of salesmen, or the customary course of business. To refuse relief would result in opening the door to a multitude of frauds and in thwarting the general policy of the law.””

   14 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Hall v. Crow · Ex Parte Brislin

2. “[m]any contracts have been refused enforcement whereby a party has striven to shield himself from the results of his fraudulent practices upon the other party. Such contracts, if given validity, would overcome the salutary maxim which pervades the common law, that fraud vitiates every transaction at the election of the injured party.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Nanfelt v. Asher

3. “Fraud which enters into the making of the contract cannot be excluded from the reach of the law by any form of phrase inserted in the contract itself. Parties cannot by written words prevent the law from inquiring into and granting relief for fraud in the substance of the contract.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Harris v. Pirnie (In Re Pirnie)