Spires v. Urbahn’s Empirical Analysis
1899
Citation profile
14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently August 1944
14 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 Cooper v. Pena · Vassault v. Edwards · Sayward v. Houghton · Wilks v. Georgia Pacific Railroad · Thurber v. Meves
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is now too well settled to permit of controversy that in such cases the completion of the work is an executed consideration which is sufficient to give mutuality to the contract. . . . These contracts have become familiar as stimulants to the construction of railroads and other public works, the inducement to the promisor, whether expressed or presumed, being the probable enhancement of the value of property by the construction. That such contracts or mere offers, unilateral at first, may be enforced when mutuality is secured by an executed consideration, is sustained upon well-recognized principles. The consideration takes its strongest form when it is executed.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. McCowen v. Pew“An original lack of mutuality in the right to specific performance will not preclude the enforcement of the contract where this want has been removed at the time the action is brought.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. McCowen v. Pew
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.