White v. Roughton’s Empirical Analysis
689 F.2d 118 · 1982
Citation profile
41 federal appellate · 6 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 73 later decisions — most recently June 2014 · most notably Alliance to End Repression v. City of Chicago (1984), Church of Scientology of California v. Internal Revenue Service (1986)
41 federal appellate · 6 district · 4 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 Goldberg v. Kelly · Dandridge v. Williams · United States v. Swift & Co. · United States v. ITT Continental Baking Co. · United States v. Armour & Co.
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 73 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“rests on the unrealistic premise that all legal instruments are drafted with complete economy of language.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“... to determine the intended rather than the literal meaning of the decree. The proposition advanced by the plaintiffs would be correct if we were construing a common carrier’s tariff rather than a decree in the nature of a contract. See Western Transport Co. v. Wilson & Co., 682 F.2d 1227, 1231 (1982). But the overriding purpose in construing a contract is to give effect to the mutual intent of the parties at the time the contract was made; and while the language of the contract is normally the best evidence of that intent, a court can properly disregard even unambiguous language when it is convinced that the parties meant something different from what they said____ Determination that the parties have a principal purpose in common requires interpretation, but if such a purpose is disclosed further interpretation is guided by it. "Even language which is otherwise explicit may be read with a modification needed to make it consistent with such a purpose." 2 Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 202, comment c (1981) (emphasis added); see also 2 id. § 212, comment b.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“... it is not true that we must read one clause in one paragraph of the decree in isolation from the rest of the paragraph and the rest of the decree without reference to the decree's evident purpose.... We do not understand the Supreme Court [in United States v. Armour & Co., infra ] to be saying that consent decrees should be interpreted as if their provisions were unmotivated, purposeless, and without context or that the “four corners” of the decree are really the “four corners" of each clause in the decree. The Court was saying that the relevant purposes in interpreting a consent decree (like any other contract) are the purposes embodied in the instrument rather than the maximum aspirations — which are bound to be inconsistent anyway — of the interested parties.”
2 later decisions 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.