Townsend v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1879
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2002
22 state decisions — followed in 17 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““If a person Is induced by false representations to come witbin the jurisdiction of a court for the purpose of obtaining service of process upon him, and process is there served, it is such an abuse that the court will, on motion, set the process aside.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““This remedy is not given upon the ground that, by reason of the fraud, the court did not get jurisdiction of the person of the defendant by the service, but upon the ground that the court will not exercise its jurisdiction in favor of the plaintiff who has obtained service of his summons by unlawful means.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Campbell v. Hudson
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.