Blount v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1967
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 58 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 79 later decisions — most recently July 2025 · most notably Nottingdale Homeowners' Ass'n v. Darby (1987), Lake Ridge Academy v. Carney (1993)
3 federal appellate · 58 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 Sheehy v. Seilon, Inc.
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 79 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“* * * parties are free to enter into contracts that contain provisions which apportion damages in the event of default. `The right to contract freely with the expectation that the contract shall endure according to its terms is as fundamental to our society as the right to write and to speak without restraint. Responsibility for the exercise, however improvident, of that right is one of the roots of its preservation.'”
4 later decisions 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.