Sawyer v. Prickett’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

38 federal appellate · 2 district · 15 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 73 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The law gives a different effect to a representation of existing facts, from that given to a representation of facts to come into existence. To make a false representation the subject of an indictment, or of an action, two things are generally necessary, viz., that it should be a statement likely to impose upon one exercising common prudence and caution, and that it should be the statement of an existing fact. A promissory statement is not, ordinarily, the subject either of an indictment or of an action.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Pollock v. Williams

2. “It is difficult to see how an action or a defense can be based upon promissory representations of the character wo have considered, and we are of the opinion that they were the expressions of hopes, expectations, and beliefs, and that neither party understood, or had the right to understand, that they were to be received as statements of facts which any one was bound to make good, or upon which the validity of the subscription should depend.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Illinois Life Ins. v. Tully