Graffam v. Wray’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 16 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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “For centuries judicial tribunals have been reluctant to intervene in controversies arising out of religious disputes. Likewise, the trial courts have been cautioned repeatedly not to delve into the resolution of ecclesiastical doctrinal controversies. See Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New Jersey v. Graves, 83 N.J. 572, 576 , 417 A.2d 19, 22 (1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1131 , 101 S.Ct. 954 , 67 L.Ed.2d 119 (1981). Disputes over church property, however may be resolved in the civil courts. As stated by the Supreme Court of the United States in Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Presbyterian Church, 393 U.S. 440, 449 , 89 S.Ct. 601, 606 , 21 L.Ed.2d 658 (1969), ‘Civil courts do not inhibit free exercise of religion merely by opening their doors to disputes involving church property. And there are neutral principles of law, developed for use in all property disputes, which can be applied without “establishing” churches to which property is awarded.’ In settling such disputes, however, the courts must not inquire into the underlying controversies over religious doctrine which may have led to the dispute.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 591 F. Supp. 676 - First Baptist Church of Glen Este v. State of Ohio

2. “willfully.” 18 . The Court recognizes that if Lawrence had stopped the District from using the landfill, the District might have had nowhere to deposit its sludge. The District might then have refused to accept further discharges from Lawrence, and Lawrence might then have been forced to cease operations in South Paris. This chain of events would unquestionably have caused serious problems for the District and for Lawrence, but it does not establish that Lawrence was not, at the least, negligent in continuing to permit the creation of, and itself indirectly to create, the threat of ground water contamination on its premises. In determining how to exercise rea sonable care to minimize the threat of ground water contamination, Lawrence had no right to rule out, as somehow "inherently unreasonable,” the option of closing its operation altogether. 19 . The Law Court in Graffam also indicated that “[t]he necessity for an accounting is a sufficient foundation for jurisdiction in equity.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 665 F. Supp. 944 - Paris Utility District v. A.C. Lawrence Leather Co.

3. “Three general categories of church polity have been defined in Note, Judicial Intervention in Disputes Over the Use of Church Property, 75 Harv.L.Rev. 1142, 1143-44 (1962) as follows: At least three kinds of internal structure, or ‘polity,’ may be discerned: congregational, presbyterial, and episcopal. In the congregational form each local congregation is self-governing. The presbyterial polities are representative, authority being exercised by laymen and ministers organized in an ascending succession of judicatories — presbytery over the session of the local church, synod over presbytery, and general assembly over all. In the episcopal form power reposes in clerical superiors, such as bishops. Roughly, presbyterial and episcopal polities may be considered hierarchical, as opposed to congregational polities, in which the autonomy of the local congregation is the central principle. (Footnotes omitted).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 591 F. Supp. 676 - First Baptist Church of Glen Este v. State of Ohio