Schempp v. Beardsley’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 28 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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Her contract being in part for the conveyance of real estate, the plaintiffs can support no action upon it. It was not, however, a mere nullity. While the Superior Court has found that it was void, we understand this to be simply a mode of stating that it was within the statute of frauds. Such, an agreement may be available for some purposes as a factor in constituting a defense. It may also, under certain circumstances, avail to avoid a defense. Such circumstances are presented in the case at bar. “If the plaintiffs had sued Miss Coffey, during her lifetime, for the reasonable value of support furnished her, she could have set up the oral agreement in defense, to show that it had been furnished under a special contract which fixed a precise compensation, and postponed payment until her decease. Clark v. Terry, 25 Conn. 395, 401 . “The law calls on no one to perform a nugatory act. As-such a suit could not be maintained, to bring it would have been useless. The statute of limitations assumes the existence of a cause of action and also of what, were it not, for the statutory prohibition, would be a right of action. The oral agreement between Miss Coffey and the Schempps-purported to give them what would constitute, on due performance of their part of it, a cause of action against her personal representatives for damages, should it be found, upon her death, that she had not done what she, on her part, had agreed to do. So long as she lived, in the absence of repudiation by her”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Messier v. Messier