Smith v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

20 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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “a successor judge takes up litigation where his or her predecessor left it.” The sole authority cited for that proposition was a 1946 Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals case in which the predecessor judge died before rendering fintd judgment in a bankruptcy reorganization proceeding. The Southern District did not mention Heintz in Thrift , which was decided only a year and a half later and adopted the opposite view expressed in Lansing and Smith , both East-em District cases. In any event, we decline to follow Heintz in this case. .Central Bank claims it is "unknown” whether Judge Ely had a transcript. We need not decide whether the result in this case would be any different if Judge Ely had read a transcript of the hearing prior to entering judgment. We do note that in Smith , the successor judge's actions were invalidated despite the fact he had available to him a copy of the transcript of the hearing conducted by his predecessor. As the court observed: "[T]o use that evidence [the transcript] the court would be required to weigh and compare the oral testimony of witnesses without having the opportunity to hear and observe those witnesses on the stand.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Central Bank of Kansas City v. Costanzo