The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations v. The State of Massachusetts’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 federal appellate · 4 district · 19 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 96 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““According to the rules of pleading in the chancery court, if the plea is unexceptionable in its form and character, the complainant must either set it down for argument, or ho must reply to it, and put in issue the facts relied on in the plea. If he elects to proceed in the manner first mentioned, and sets down the plea for argument, he then admits the truth of all the facts stated in the plea, and merely denies their sufficiency in point of law to prevent his recovery. If, on the other hand, he replies to the plea, and denies the truth of the facts therein stated, he then admits that, if the particular facts stated in the plea are true, they are then sufficient in law to bar his recovery; and, if they are proved to be true, the bill must be dismissed, without, reference to ihe equity arising from any other facts stated in the bill. Hughes v. Blake, 6 Wheat. 472 , 5 L. Ed. 303 . Undoubtedly, if a plea upon argument is ruled to be sufficient in law to bar the recovery of the complainant, the court of chancery would, according to its uniform practice, allow him to amend, and to put in issue, by a proper replication, the troth of the facts stated in the plea. But in either case the controversy would turn altogether upon the facts stated in the plea, if the plea is permitted to stand. It is the strict and technical character of these rules of pleading, and the danger of injustice often arising from them, which has given rise to the equitable discretion always exercised by the co”

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

2. ““The true end of a plea is to save to the parties the expense of an examination of the witnesses at large. And the defense, proper for a plea, is such as reduces the cause, or some part of it, to a single point, and from thence creates a bar or other obstruction to the suit, or to the point to which the plea applies. Hence a plea, in order to be good, whether it be affirmative or negative, must be either an allegation or a denial of some leading fact, or of matters which, taken collectively, make out some general fact, which is a complete defense. * * * It may then be laid down as a rule that various facts can never be pleaded in one plea unless they are all conducive to a single point, on which the defendant means to rest his defense; for otherwise it will be open to the charge of duplicity and multifariousness.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Miller & Lux v. Rickey

3. ““The reason why ithis court does not admit such pleas, containing different and distinct points, is that you may put all the different circumstances together in your answer, which you cannot do at common law. There is therefore not the same reason in equity as at law for pleading double. The use of a plea here Is to save time, expense, and vexation. If one point will put an end to the whole cause, it is important to the administration of justice that it should be pleaded; but, if you are to state many matters, the answer is the more commodious form to do it in. If the defendants might be permitted to bring two points, on which the cause depends, to issue, by his plea, he might bring three, or twenty, and so on, until all the matters in the bill are brought to issue by the plea.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Miller & Lux v. Rickey