Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/French Bank of California v. First National Bank of Louisville

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. RL0919 (talk) 19:04, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

French Bank of California v. First National Bank of Louisville[edit]

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Not notable state appeals court decision. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 00:38, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 00:38, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Kentucky-related deletion discussions. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 00:38, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. This article doesn't indicate why this case may be notable. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:21, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't believe that "ever" being used as a precedent is enough to ensure notability for a case. If it was a frequently cited precedent that was often mentioned, that would signify notability to me, but this is just a state court case that's not even from Kentucky's highest court. Just one use, or just a few uses, as a precedent, does not imply notability to me. Part of this article deals with the fact that the case citation -- that is, the volume and page number among the hundreds of volumes of the South Western Reporter -- was mentioned in a movie ... in relation to a fictional case with a different name whose fictional holding had nothing to do with this case. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 16:56, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The notability claims have been restored with new sources. It is generally accepted that cases that become precedent are notable for inclusion. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:19, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I disagree on two counts. First, I don't think "It is generally accepted that cases that become precedent are notable for inclusion" is correct. Second, since this is not the highest court of the state, the extent to which it is actually precedent is questionable. In the federal system, for example, a case decided at the appellate level, as this one is, is binding precedent only to trial courts within the circuit that decided the case; and some states follow this rule. In other states, a decision by an appellate court is binding on all lower courts, but not on other appellate courts of the state, and never to that state's highest court. I'm not sure what rule Kentucky follows, but given that this is merely an intermediate appellate case, and the rareness with which it is cited, it doesn't sound like it's much of a precedent. TJRC (talk) 16:39, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - While I believe this should be deleted (!vote is below), I disagree with TJRC's comment above on rationale. Generally for U.S. federal or state courts, intermediate appellate decisions are binding only on courts immediately below them, but such cases can still be so frequently cited as persuasive authority in other circuits, or analyzed in academic publications for articulating a new legal principle, that they become notable despite never being heard by the relevant highest court. The important thing is that neither of those things have happened here. There's only two new cases to be found that cite to this case as precedent, one of which just includes it in the middle of a string cite. Such strings of citations are common to lend weight to rulings, and don't magically imbue every case they cite to with notability. If Wikipedia had an article for every appellate decision that was cited more than once, it would fill with pages about non-notable cases. This decision is rather typical legal fare, which is why there's no academic interest focusing on it, and only one research article that appears to even mention it at all. It may be occasionally useful to lawyers practicing in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, but that's what legal research services are for; it fails WP:GNG. Shelbystripes (talk) 18:03, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - I don't think we're really in disagreement; just a difference in terminology. Your usage is a bit more precise and clearer than mine, so thanks for that. TJRC (talk) 19:23, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It looks notable and well-sourced. --evrik ^(talk) 20:03, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. While state appellate decisions are not automatically notable, this seems to have significant coverage. Bearian (talk) 18:07, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I don't see any significant coverage in third-party sources. Yes, it's cited in two other cases, but that's pretty weak tea. First of all, two cases is practically nothing. There are damned few cases decided in any court that don't get cited sooner or later. If being cited in two cases is sufficient basis for notability, there are very few reported cases out of any court that would fail to pass the notability bar.

And the nature of the cites for this case are unimpressive. Lindley v. Paducah Bank Trust is the more extensive of the two, and even that is just a one-paragraph discussion with a two-paragraph pull-quote included at the very end of the opinion; not central to the decision at all. The other, Laskowski v. Spellings is even weaker. It's a throwaway reference in the middle of a string-cite to multiple authorities.

It's treated in one published law review article, Scott D. Benner, Commercial Law: Loss Allocation under U.C.C. Article 4A, 1990 Ann. Surv. Am. L. 239 (1990). French Bank is one of two cases discussed under the topic of "Erroneous Execution of Payment Orders."

For a case that's four decades old, this case is barely noticeable, let alone notable. A notable case would have been cited far more and gotten significant academic coverage.

The sole thing that makes this interesting is that the citation to the case -- "585 S.W.2d 431" -- was once used in a movie. That's not enough. TJRC (talk) 00:16, 18 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 07:38, 19 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - There’s nothing notable about this case, it appears to boil down to an application of a state statue by an appeals court. The only thing people are citing for notability is a citation in a fictional story, that is not a cite to this case. It’s a cite to a fictional case with a made-up citation that happens to map to this case. That’s more appropriately addressed on a page for that story, it doesn’t give any notability to this case. The lack of academic discussion of this case, at its age, makes it clearly undeserving of encyclopedic inclusion. Shelbystripes (talk) 06:52, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. There are literally hundreds of thousands of non-terminal state-level appellate cases like these, so the mere existence of the case (with a handful of later cases citing it) is meaningless, even with the coincidental fictional tie-in. We should have a standard for cases, which for non-terminal state-level cases should at least require selection for usage in a casebook. BD2412 T 04:24, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@BD2412: Like WP:CASES that was proposed? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 07:52, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The wording of that proposal is ignorant of how the law works. Even the millions of opinions generated by the trial courts can be used as precedent if any other court wants to cite one of them for its reasoning. The case at issue in this discussion is of no binding precedential value upon anyone except perhaps the lower court hearing a later phase of the same case between the same parties. BD2412 T 12:01, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree there should be a law notability policy. I think that WP:CASES is an ok baseline to start from, but it should be looked at again and formally proposed @BD2412:. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 14:58, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A new notability policy would be a good effort, but in the meantime, WP:CASES failed because it was overly broad and would justify articles exactly like this one--a decades-old, generic state court case applying state law, cited briefly a couple of times in later cases, and otherwise not mentioned in any reliable sources. Even lawyers don't consider this case notable, given the lack of academic writings about it; I see no reason to give it an exception to WP:GNG, which it clearly fails. Shelbystripes (talk) 18:41, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.