11 Cal. 3d 963 - Blank v. Borden’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
63 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 81 later decisions — most recently April 2017 · most notably 128 Cal. App. 4th 1305 - Morris v. Redwood Empire Bancorp (2005), 15 Cal. 3d 813 - Community Redevelopment Agency v. Abrams (1975)
63 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 11 Cal. 3d 1 - D'AMICO v. Board of Medical Examiners · Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc. · 6 Cal. 3d 784 - Fracasse v. Brent · Davey v. Southern Pacific Co. · 9 Cal. 3d 731 - Garrett v. Coast & Southern Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n
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 81 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he clause in question presents the owner with a true option or alternative: if, during the term of an exclusive-right-to-sell contract, the owner changes his mind and decides that he does not wish to sell the subject property after all, he retains the power to terminate the agent’s otherwise exclusive right through the payment of a sum certain set forth in the contract.... [W]hat distinguishes the instant case from other situations in which a form of alternative performance is used to mask what is in reality a penalty or forfeiture is the element of rational choice.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““If ... we view the owner’s exercise of a withdrawal-from-sale clause as an anticipatory ‘breach’ of the main contract, the ‘damage’ sustained by the broker would not be measured in the amount of effort expended by him prior to the ‘breach’ but rather would be measured in terms of the value of the lost opportunity to effect a sale and thereby receive compensation.” Blank v. Borden, supra, 524 P.2d at 132 (Emphasis in original)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“‘[W]hile an alternative promise to pay money when it presents a conceivable choice is valid, yet, if a contract is made by which a party engages himself either to do a certain act or to pay some amount which at the time of the contract no one would have considered an eligible alternative, the alternative promise to pay is unenforceable as a penalty.’ (McCormick, Damages, supra, § 154, pp. 617-618).”
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.