Beale v. Hayes’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 13 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is not always, however, that damages are to be construed as liquidated because the parties have construed them to be so. The language of the parties to the agreement in question is clear and emphatic that the sum of $3,000 shall be recoverable from the party making default, as and for liquidated damages; yet no court of justice, without an entire disregard of prior decisions, can give effect to the apparent intentions of the parties by adopting that construction of their agreement which the terms they have used so forcibly suggest. * * * When consequences so unreasonable would follow, the law presumes that they must have been overlooked by the parties, and therefore mercifully gives to their language an interpretation which excludes them. When it would be plainly unconseientious to exact a large sum for a trivial breach, even a court of law, acting upon a principle of equity, will release the parties from the literal obligation Which their language imports.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Chicago House-Wrecking Co. v. United States