Partridge v. The Insurance Company’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

21 federal appellate · 5 district · 8 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 70 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The tendency to establish local and limited usages and customs in the contracts of parties, who had no reference to them, when the transactions, took ■place, has gone quite as-far as sound policy can justify. It places in the hands of corporations, such as banks, insurance companies, and others, by compelling individuals to comply with rules established for the interests alone of the former, a power of establishing those rules as usage or custom with the force of law. When this is confined to establishing an implied contract, and the knowledge of the usage is brought home to the other party, the evil is not so .great- But when it is sought to extend the doctrine beyond this, and incorporate the custom into an express contract whose terms are reduced to writing and. are expressed in language neither technical nor ambiguous, and therefore needing no such aid in its construction, it amounts to establishing the principle that a custom may add to or vary or contradict the well-expressed intention of the parties made in writing. No such extension of the doctrine is consistent either with authority or with the principles which govern,the law of contracts.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Harding v. Cargo of 4,698 Tons of New Rivers Steam Coal · R. J. Menz Lumber Co. v. E. J. McNeeley & Co.

2. ““It appears to us, as it did to the circuit court, that the testimony offered would have established a new and distinct term to the contract. It would have established a contract very different from the written one introduced by plaintiff. The language of the letter was neither ambiguous nor technical. It required and needed no expert, no usage to discover its meaning. ■ To have admitted the usage offered in evidence in this case would have been to make a contract for the parties differing materially from the written one under which they had both acted for some time.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. R. J. Menz Lumber Co. v. E. J. McNeeley & Co.

3. ““It would be a most pernicious doctrine to allow a citizen of a distant state to institute in these courts a suit against a citizen of the state where the court is held, and escape the liability which the laws of the state have attached to all plaintiffs, of allowing just and legal set-offs and counterclaims to be interposed and tried in the same suit and in the same forum.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Fidelity Insurance, Trust & Safe-Deposit Co. v. Mechanics' Sav. Bank