Hackworth v. Flinchum’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 district · 2 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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Where an acknowledgment is essential to the validity of a document, but the word acknowledgment is not defined and no particular form of acknowledgment is required by the statute, it would seem to this court that a subscription of the signature to the document in the presence of the proper official under oath is a sufficient proof of due execution of the document and would constitute substantial compliance with the statute.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Dunlap v. Commonwealth Community Bank (In Re Phelps) · Select Portfolio Services, Inc. v. Burden (In Re Trujillo)

2. “‘In the absence of a mandatory statute substantial rather than literal compliance with the form or requirements laid down in the statute is all that is essential to the validity of a certificate of acknowledgment. This is said to be true even though the statute prescribes that acknowledgments ‘must’ be substantially in the form prescribed. The general policy of the law is to construe certificates of acknowledgment liberally and to uphold them if they are in substantial compliance with the statutory requirements as to form and content, even though they may fall short of literal conformity thereto, or contain clerical errors, or be otherwise subject to merely technical objections. Although words not in the statute are used in place of others, or words of a statute are omitted, if the meaning of the words used is the same or they represent the same facts, or if the omission of a word or words is immaterial or can be supplied by reasonable construction of the whole instrument, the acknowledgment will be sufficient.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Dunlap v. Commonwealth Community Bank (In Re Phelps)

3. “It may well be that the acknowledgment of deeds of conveyance should require greater formality because of the historical development of the law pertaining to the rights of married women and the necessity for them to personally acknowledge the execution of an instrument of conveyance. But we see no need to impose super-technical requirements of form of acknowledgment in other cases where the legislature has not done so.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Select Portfolio Services, Inc. v. Burden (In Re Trujillo)