Jessup v. Illinois Cent. R.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 3 district · 1 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The general practice is perfectly well settled that the defendant may have the bill of complaint dismissed for want of prosecution if the plaintiff does not proceed within a reasonable time. * * * The present is a case where codefendants having answered insist upon the right to dismiss the bill on account of the nonprosecution of the same against Swan. It would be an intolerable grievance if codefendants could not insist upon such a right, for it might otherwise happen that a case could not be brought to a hearing against them alone, and thus they might be held in court for an indefinite period — perhaps during their whole lives — and very valuable property in their hands be incapable of safe alienation. No court of justice, and least of all a court of equity, could be presumed to suffer its process to become the means of such gross mischief.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Brown v. Fletcher