Thompson v. Libby’s Empirical Analysis
1885
Citation profile
17 federal appellate · 47 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 69 later decisions — most recently January 1989 · most notably Harrison v. McCormick (1891), Interform Co. v. Mitchell (1978)
17 federal appellate · 47 state decisions — followed in 16 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Hei v. Heller · Creery v. Holly · Stone v. Harmon · La Farge v. Rickert · Healy v. Young
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 69 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The only criterion of the completeness of the written contract as a full expression of the agreement of the parties is the writing itself. If it imports on its face to be a complete expression of the whole agreement — that is, contains such language as imports a complete legal obligation — it is to be presumed that the parties have introduced into it every material item and term; and parol evidence cannot be admitted to add another term to the agreement, although the writing contains nothing on the particular one to which the parol evidence is directed.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage““Where !he parties liave deliberately put their engagements into writing, In such terms as'to import a legal obligation, without any uncertainty as to the object or extent of such engagement, it is conclusively presumed that the whole engagement of the parties, and the manner and extent of their undertaking, was reduced to writing.” Thompson v. Libby, 34 Minn. 374 , 377, 26 N. W. 1 ; 1 Greenl. Ev. § 275; Barnes v. Railway Co., 12 U. S. App. 1, 7, 4 C. C. A. 199 , and 54 Fed. 87 ; McMurphy v. Walker, 20 Minn. 382 , 386 (Gil. 334); Harmon v. Harmon, 51 Fed. 113 , 115.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““* * * But to allow a party to lay the foundation for such parol evidence by oral testimony that only part of the agreement was reduced to writing, and then prove by parol the part omitted, would be to work in a circle, and to permit the very evil which the rule was designed to prevent.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.