51 Md. App. 217 - Donovan v. Scuderi’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently January 2017
7 state decisions
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.
Relationships
Relies on Patton v. United States · 18 Cal. 3d 660 - Marvin v. Marvin · Adler v. American Standard Corp. · Kozlowski v. Kozlowski · Dougherty v. Dougherty
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Judge Messitte approached the problem as a factual issue. He received testimony from Professor William I. Weston of the University of Baltimore School of Law, who was accepted as an expert in both domestic relations law and ethics. He consulted dictionaries and treatises about language and how it develops. He examined newspaper and magazine articles. He concluded that “ ‘palimony’ is already a legitimate word fairly used in a broad sense ... as referring to the collective rights of unmarried cohabitants.” He expressed the view that, in that broad sense, Maryland does recognize a cause of action for “palimony” because this Court, in Baxter, supra, said: But the mere fact that a man and a woman are living together in an unlawful relation does not disable them from making an enforceable contract with each other, if it has no reference to continuation of the relation, or is only incidentally connected with it, and may be supported independently of it. A loan to the woman to buy herself clothes would be lawful, and upon the same reasoning a loan to buy real property not for the furtherance of the immoral relation would be enforceable.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[w]hether an agreement is reached as the result of ego, braggadocio, love, kindness or affection does not affect the validity of a contract. Nor is it unenforceable because the contract may never have been struck, “but for” the relationship, even if proven adulterous. That relationship does not disable parties from making an enforceable contract with each other so long as it does not stand or fall upon the sexual relationship.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.