Cotnam v. Wisdom’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The trial court erred in admitting testimony as to the value of the patient’s estate, against the objection of the defendant. The inquiry was as to the value of the professional services rendered by the plaintiff to the defendant’s testator and, as the case was presented below, the amount or value of the latter’s estate could shed no legitimate light upon this issue nor aid in its elucidation: The cure or amelioration of disease is as important to a poor man as it is to a rich one, and, prima facie at least, the services rendered the one are of the same value as the same services rendered to the other. If there was a recognized usage obtaining in the premises here involved to graduate professional charges with reference to the financial condition of the person for whom such services are rendered, which had been so long established and so universally acted upon as to have ripened into a custom of such character that it might be considered that these services were rendered and accepted in contemplation of it, there is no hint of it in the evidence.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Houda v. McDonald