Memishian v. Phipps’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 105 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 107 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is the duty of a trial judge sitting without a jury in an action at law to make rulings of law in response to proper requests therefor, that the right of review of questions of law may be preserved, and to decide the case by making an ultimate finding of fact. Wrobel v. General Accident Fire & Life Assurance Corp. Ltd., 288 Mass. 206, 209 . Adamaitis v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 295 Mass. 215, 219 . But the trial judge is not required to make special findings of fact even though requested to do so. Castano v. Leone, 278 Mass. 429, 431 . Gosselin v. Silver, 301 Mass. 481, 482 . Nor is a trial judge required to make rulings of law not called for by proper requests. Though it often may be desirable for the trial judge voluntarily to make special findings of fact or rulings of law for the information of the parties and the presentation of the real question of law for review (see Castano v. Leone, 278 Mass. 429, 431 ), failure to do so is not error.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. O'Brien v. Anderson