Egbert v. Greenwalt’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

26 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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The point of the objection is understood as being that the nature of the action excluded the idea of violence, and contemplated that the wife’s participation was voluntary and not forced, and that, as the case made by the evidence negatived her consent and proved that she was debauched by violence, the action failed. “The position is not tenable. The common law, in giving this remedy, instead of making the husband’s right of action depend on his wife’s having consented to her defilement, has invariably, whatever the truth might be, decisively assumed that she did not assent, but was overcome by force, and the action has been sustained just the same, whether, as matter of fact, her will concurred, or she was outraged by actual violence [citing cases]. And there seems to be no basis in justice or policy for the position that if the personal wrong is accompanied by circumstances of such atrocity as to elévate it to the public offense of rape the private remedy is thereby either taken away or suspended. Cooley on Torts, 86 to 90. It is not reasonable to convert the wife’s innocence into a shield to save her assailant from prosecution for his private wrong to her husband.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Hirdes v. Ottawa Circuit Judge