Staples v. Staples’s Empirical Analysis
1894
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently March 1981
20 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Park v. . Park · Lansing v. Lansing · Keyes v. Scanlan
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is true that the remedy is severe and harsh. Imprisonment certainly should not be ordered when it appears that the default is the result of honest inability to pay, on account of business misfortunes, or lack of health or earning ability, or other circumstances which are not the fault of defendant. But where the inability is wilfully brought about by defendant himself, with intent to avoid payment, the refusal to pay becomes contumacious, and the inability so resulting will not purge the defendant of contempt.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.