Frush v. Green’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

25 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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It [undue influence] often closely resembles and is near akin to actual fraud, and like the latter when most cunningly employed is exceedingly difficult to expose. From the very nature * * * of the wrong itself, it is rare that direct evidence can be procured to unmask it, and hence the results accomplished in a given case, the divergence of those results from the course which would ordinarily and naturally be looked for, the situation of the parties taking benefits under an instrument, alleged to be the product of its dominion towards the person who has executed that instrument, their antecedent relations to and intercourse with each other ; the legitimate, but unrecognized claims of others upon the bounty of the one who has discarded them; their dependence upon him; his prior declaration; the instincts of justice and the promptings of gratitude of which every unbiased mind is sensible; the natural ties of affection, together with all the circumstances surrounding the entire transaction under investigation, and the inference legitimately deducible from them, often furnish, even in the teeth of directly contradictory testimony, ample ground for the conclusion that undue influence has been successfully resorted to, to accomplish an end which is grossly unjust and whose very existence cannot be satisfactorily accounted for or explained except upon the theory that undue influence has produced it.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Wayne v. Huber

2. “undue influence is not, of course, every mere entreaty or pressing solicitation that may be invoked to sway the conduct or to persuade the judgment of another; but it is that degree of importunity which deprives one of his free agency — such as he is too weak or too feeble to resist, and such as will render the instrument executed under its supremacy not his free and unconstrained act.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 96 Md. App. 296 - Schneider v. Schneider