Sousa v. Sousa’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

54 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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[F]inal judgments are ... presumptively valid ... and collateral attacks on their validity are disfavored.... The reason for the rule against collateral attack is well stated in these words: The law aims to invest judicial transactions with the utmost permanency consistent with justice.... Public policy requires that a term be put to litigation and that judgments, as solemn records upon which valuable rights rest, should not lightly be disturbed or overthrown.... [T]he law has established appropriate proceedings to which a judgment party may always resort when he deems himself wronged by the court's decision.... If he omits or neglects to test the soundness of the judgment by these or other direct methods available for that purpose, he is in no position to urge its defective or erroneous character when it is pleaded or produced in evidence against him in subsequent proceedings. Unless it is entirely invalid and that fact is disclosed by an inspection of the record itself the judgment is invulnerable to indirect assaults upon it.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 182 Conn. App. 844 - Fed. Nat'l Mortg. Ass'n v. Farina · Traylor v. State

2. “[I]t is now well settled that, [u]nless a litigant can show an absence of subject matter jurisdiction that makes the prior judgment of a tribunal entirely invalid , he or she must resort to direct proceedings to correct perceived wrongs .... A collateral attack on a judgment is a procedurally impermissible substitute for an appeal.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 182 Conn. App. 844 - Fed. Nat'l Mortg. Ass'n v. Farina · Traylor v. State

3. “Connecticut's case law is in conflict regarding whether the modification of a property distribution postdissolution implicates the court's subject matter jurisdiction or merely its statutory authority.... Those cases standing for the proposition that the statutory restriction on postjudgment modification of property distribution is jurisdictional, on which the Appellate Court relied in [ Sousa ], do not address the distinction made by [this court] in Amodio v. Amodio , [ 247 Conn. 724 , 728, 724 A.2d 1084 (1999) ], that the court's authority to act pursuant to a statute is different from its subject matter jurisdiction.... The mere existence of this conflict, along with the Superior Court's general jurisdiction over * family matters under [General Statutes] § 46b-1, demonstrates that, even if we assume, without deciding, that the restriction of postjudgment modification of property distributions in § 46b-86(a) is in fact jurisdictional in nature, it is far from entirely obvious that [the trial court] was without subject matter jurisdiction ... when [it] modified the pension distribution.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Reinke v. Sing