Panel record — V14, Riggs, one determination struck
Panel in build The struck determination below is printed in full, marked, and kept. A quotation that does not exist is a fact about this pass, and suppressing it would leave the reader with a tidier record and less of the truth.
ANNOTATED SOURCE · CANONICAL MATCH
No one shall be permitted to profit by his own fraud, or to take advantage of his own wrong, or to found any claim upon his own iniquity, or to acquire property by his own crime.[V14]
AtRiggs, 115 NY at 511
The same marker is on the draft and in the index. The record below preserves every advisory reading, including the one the final script struck.
THE SENTENCE AS DRAFTED
Riggs v Palmer establishes that a court may disregard the plain text of a statute whenever enforcing it would be inequitable.
Cited toRiggs v Palmer, 115 NY 506 [1889]
STEP 1 · SCRIPT — CANDIDATE LANGUAGE LOCATED
resolve Riggs v Palmer, 115 NY 506 .. found
audit served span ................. clean
extract claim terms ................. disregard plain text · statute · whenever · inequitable
search lexical + span retrieval .... candidate spans returned
rank best candidate .............. p 511
flag claim term “whenever” ....... no candidate supports an unlimited rule
halt similarity is not support — no determination made
1“All laws as well as all contracts may be controlled in their operation and effect by general, fundamental maxims of the common law.”
115 NY at 511 2“No one shall be permitted to profit by his own fraud, or to take advantage of his own wrong, or to found any claim upon his own iniquity, or to acquire property by his own crime.”
115 NY at 511 3“It never could have been their intention that a donee who murdered the testator to make the will operative should have any benefit under it.”
115 NY at 509
STEP 2 · READER ONE — 27B-PARAMETER DENSE MODEL
A court of equity will not suffer the letter of a statute to work an injustice in a case its framers did not foresee.
Riggs, 115 NY at 511 — as quoted by the reader
READER ONE — THINKINGOn this sentence the opinion states a general equitable power to decline the literal operation of a statute where enforcement would produce injustice. The draft states that power in modern words.
STEP 3 · READER TWO — 12B-PARAMETER DENSE MODEL
No one shall be permitted to profit by his own fraud, or to take advantage of his own wrong, or to found any claim upon his own iniquity, or to acquire property by his own crime.
Riggs, 115 NY at 511
READER TWO — THINKINGThe opinion controls the statute of wills by a specific maxim in a specific case: a murderer may not take under the will of the person he killed. “Whenever enforcing it would be inequitable” is a general power the opinion never claims, and it is the word “whenever” that does the overstating.
STEP 4 · TIEBREAK READER — 32B-PARAMETER MIXTURE-OF-EXPERTS MODEL
It never could have been their intention that a donee who murdered the testator to make the will operative should have any benefit under it.
Riggs, 115 NY at 509
TIEBREAK READER — THINKINGThe court reads the statute as the legislature would have written it for this case, rather than setting the statute aside. That is a canon of construction applied to one situation, not a licence to disregard plain text whenever a result seems inequitable.
STEP 5 · SYSTEM — MODEL RECOMMENDATION
Tally2 of 3 readers · NOT SUPPORTED
RecommendationNOT SUPPORTED
Provisional: the readers’ majority, recorded on their say-so alone. The final gate follows.
STEP 6 · SCRIPT — FINAL GATE
verify reader one span ..... NOT FOUND in the opinion — STRUCK
search all reporters ....... span appears in no NY opinion
verify reader two span ..... verbatim at 115 NY 511 ✓
verify tiebreak span ....... verbatim at 115 NY 509 ✓
strike reader one determination ... removed from the tally, recorded in the packet
re-tally determinations on verbatim spans ... 2 of 3
issue packet verdict ...... OVERSTATED
Reader One supported the paraphrase and quoted the opinion to prove it. The quotation is not in the opinion — not at page 511, not anywhere in it, and not in any other opinion in the reports. The gate does not argue with the reasoning; it checks the text the reasoning stands on, finds nothing there, and strikes the determination. Had that struck determination carried the majority, no recommendation would have been recorded at all and the paraphrase would have returned to counsel unresolved. This is what “scripts gate, models advise” means on the day it costs something.
VERDICT AS FILED
OVERSTATEDThe maxim is real and the case is famous for it. The draft turns a maxim applied to a murdering legatee into a general power over statutes — and the packet records both the narrowing and the struck determination that argued against it.
NEAREST SUPPORTED PARAPHRASE“Riggs applies the maxim that no one may profit by his own wrong to deny a murderer the benefit of his victim’s will, construing the statute of wills as the legislature would have written it for that case.”
Riggs v Palmer, 115 NY 506, 509, 511 [1889]