72 Cal. App. 2d 508 - Elms v. Elms’s Empirical Analysis
1946
Citation profile
105 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 107 later decisions — most recently November 2011 · most notably Luz v. Lopes (1960), Coconino Pulp and Paper Company v. Marvin (1957)
105 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 Bailey v. Taaffe · Shearman v. Jorgensen · Brill v. Fox · McGuire v. Drew · 64 Cal. App. 2d 897 - Hughes v. Wright
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 107 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“.“To warrant relief under section 473. a litigant’s neglect must have been such as might have been the act. of a reasonably prudent person under the same circumstances.. The inadvertence contemplated by the statute does not mean mere inadvertence. in the abstract. If it is wholly inexcusable it does not justify relief. Freeman on Judgments, 5th Ed. Vol. 1, p. 482; Shearman v. Jorgenson, 106 Cal. 483, 485 , 39 P. 863 . It is the duty of every party desiring to resist an action or to participate in a judicial proceeding to take timely and adequate steps to retain counsel or to act in his own person to avoid an undesirable judgment. Unless in arranging for his defense he shows that he has exercised such reasonable diligence as a man of ordinary prudence usually bestows upon important business his motion for relief under section 473 will be denied. Freeman, 483, 5th Ed. Courts neither act as guardians for incompetent parties nor for those who .are grossly careless of their own affairs. All must be governed by the rules in force, universally applied according to the showing made. Gillingham v. Lawrence, 11 Cal.App. 231, 232 , 104 P. 584 . The law frowns upon setting aside default judgments resulting from inexcusable neglect of the complainant. The only occasion for the application of section 473 is where a party is unexpectedly placed in a situation to his injury without fault or negligence of his own and against which ordinary prudence could not have guarded. Neither inadvertence”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.