Ross v. Duval’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 federal appellate · 4 district · 12 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. ““And here the question arises whether the Virginia act of 1792, having been passed subsequent to 1789, can have any effect in the present case. So far as this act can be held to regulate executions, it is clearly inapplicable under the process acts of 1789 and 1792 to the Circuit Court; but the act is substantially and technically a limitation on judgments. It is not therefore an act to regulate process. Executions are named in the act, and are authorized to be issued under certain circumstances, within a limited time; but this is only another mode of limiting the judgment, and is strictly and technically as much a limitation on the judgment, as is imposed in the first part of the same section in reference to a scire facias or action of debt. The act provides that after the lapse of 10 years from the rendition of a judgment, where no execution has been issued, neither an action of debt nor a scire facias shall be brought on it, and that, where an execution has been issued and not returned, other executions and proceedings may be had within the 10 years, but not afterwards. If this, then, be a limitation law, it is a rule of property, and, under the thirty-fourth section of the judiciary act, is a rule of decision for the courts of the United States. As an act of limitation, it is impossible to distinguish this from other acts which limit the time of bringing certain actions, either by a designation of the ground or the form of the action.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Copp v. Louisville & N. Ry. Co. · General Electric Co. v. Hurd

2. ““This is a limitation and not a process statute. When there is want of the issuance of an execution within ten years, the judgment becomes not only dormant, but dead. No execution can thereafter issue, and no action can be maintained upon the judgment, because it is conclusively presumed to have been paid. By section 721 of the Revised Statutes (U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 581), the laws of the several states are to be regarded as rules of decision in the trials at common law, in courts of the United States, in cases where they apply. This is the purport of section 34 of the original Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789 (Act. Sept. 24, 1789, e, 20, 1 Stat. 92 ). Under this law section 241 of the Oregon statutes becomes a rule of property and it precludes complainants’ right of suit for the enforcement of its decrees under any contingency.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Raymer v. Comley Lumber Co.

3. “The forms of mesne process, except the style, an<;l the forms and modes of proceeding in suits, in courts of the United States, held in those States admitted into the Union since the twenty-ninth day of September, in the year seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, in those of common law, shall be the same in each of the States, respectively, as are now used in the highest court, of original and general jurisdiction of the same.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Lamaster v. Keeler