Butler v. Watkins’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

33 federal appellate · 4 district · 29 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 85 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In actions for fraud, large latitude is always given to the admission of evidence. If a motive exist prompting to a particular line of eondnet, and it he shown that in pursuing that line a defendant has deceived and defrauded one person, it may justly be inferred that similar conduct towards another, at or about the same time and in relation to a like subject, was actuated by the same spirit.””

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. New York Mutual Life Insurance v. Armstrong · Exchange Bank v. Moss

2. ““It is quite true that the suit was not brought upon any contract. The theory of the plaintiff was that no agreement had ever been made, and that the defendants had never intended making one, though all the while during' the negotiation, deceptively and fraudulently holding out to the plaintiff a profession of intention to conclude an agreement, and that this was done with the purpose of keeping the plaintiff’s ‘cotton-tie’ out of the market. * * * It does not follow, because the corporation never authorized or sanctioned a contract, that they may not.be responsible for such a fraud as was alleged in the petition. We have not all the evidence before us, but it does appear-that some evidence was given tending to show that the acts and conduct of the defendants (Watkins and the corporation), were deceitful and fraudulent, designed to mislead, and done for the purpose of keeping the plaintiff’s cotton-tie out of the market, in order that they might secure heavy sales of the Beard tie, in which they were largely interested. If the evidence did establish or tended to establish such deceit and fraud, for such a purpose, and if the plaintiff was injured thereby, as his petition alleged, it was erroneous to charge the jury that the suit could not be maintained. Competition in efforts to secure the' market is doubtless lawful. A manufacturer may by superior energy, or enterprise, supply all the buyers of a particular article, and thus leave no market for similar articles manufactured ”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Rogers v. Virginia-Carolina Chemical Co. · Exchange Bank v. Moss