acknowledgment
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 26 U.S. 351 - Montgomery Bell v. James Morrison Anthony Butler and Jonathan Taylor · 1828Most cited · 264 citing opinions
must be unqualified
If there be no express promise, but a promise is to be raised by implication of law from the acknowledgment of the party, such acknowledgment ought to contain an unqualified and direct admission of a previous, subsisting debt, which the party is liable and willing to pay. If there be accompanying circumstances, which repel the presumption of a promise or intention to pay; if the expressions be equivocal, vague, and indeterminate, leading to no certain conclusion, but at best to probable inference, which may affect different minds in different ways; we think they ought not to go to a jury as evidence of a new promise to revive the cause of action.
How often courts cite the cases defining “acknowledgment”
Court decisions citing the 2 opinions that defined “acknowledgment” — 306 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 2 definitions, chronological · 1828–1864
there could be no acknowledgment of the deed within the requisitions of the statute until the blanks were filled and the instrument complete. Till then there was no deed to be acknowledged.