Norton v. Eagle Automatic Can Co.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

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

1. ““While the beaten path of precedent is undoubtedly the safest road for nisi prius courts to follow, a blind adherence thereto, without considering the changed facts, would often lead to great injustice, which it should be the aim of every court to avoid. A safe, just, and equitable rule would be to require the defendant in such cases to produce new evidence of such a clear and positive character as to justify a well-founded belief that upon the final hearing the full proofs might be such as to warrant a different construction of complainant’s patent.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Ford v. Taylor