Bearss v. Ford’s Empirical Analysis
1883
Citation profile
34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 35 later decisions — most recently September 2014 · most notably 3 E.H. Smith 71 - Albany County Savings Bank v. McCarty (1896), Green v. Ashland Sixty-Third State Bank (1931)
34 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 Fitzgerald v. Fitzgerald · Preschbaker v. Heirs of Feaman
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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“in construing instruments of this kind, when the consideration is an existing mortgage indebtedness, [courts] are more inclined to treat them as mortgages than when given upon an original advance, and when so treated they will not be regarded as a substitute for the former security, unless the intention to that effect is manifest, and in such cases the original mortgage may be foreclosed notwithstanding the giving of the new one, hence the principle “once a mortgage always a mortgage,” has become a leading fundamental doctrine of the law of mortgages. The most satisfactory, and as a general rule the controlling, test in cases of this kind is, does the giving of the new instrument operate as a satisfaction or extinguishment of the mortgage indebtedness? If it does not, such new instrument will be treated as an additional security for the debt, or, in other words, as an additional mortgage. ...”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. In re Primes
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.