74 N.C. App. 247 - Cole v. Cole’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Plaintiff and defendant were married on 19 April 1970. [Plaintiff] bore one child on 19 August 1971 and another on 29 September 1975. Defendant had a bilateral vasectomy on 20 February 1976. On 20 May 1976, the physician who performed the vasectomy made a sperm count on a specimen brought by defendant, and it was negative. Also a pathology test was performed on the sections of the vasa deferentia removed from defendant, and the test confirmed that the vasectomy had been successful. On 10 September 1982 the plaintiff gave birth to a son, Jonathan Derrick Cole. The defendant acknowledged that he was the child’s father on the child’s birth certificate. In the Spring of 1983 the parties’ marriage deteriorated. They separated on 9 July 1983. On 15 September 1983, Dr. John Grimes performed a semen analysis on defendant and determined that he was [non-fertile]. Dr. Grimes found no evidence of any vasectomy performed on defendant except for the one of 20 February 1976. Dr. Grimes testified that he believed defendant was [non-fertile] during the years 1981-82 and that the likelihood of defendant becoming fertile after his vasectomy was “one in a million and probably less than that now.” A blood test was performed on defendant, on the child Jonathan Cole, and on plaintiff. The test indicated that the probability of defendant being Jonathan’s father was 95.98%, assuming that defendant “was a fertile male at the time of presumed conception, [sic] Undisputed evidence to the contrary would”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 90 N.C. App. 724 - Cole v. Cole