Mabb v. Merriam’s Empirical Analysis
1900
Citation profile
7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently December 2008
7 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.
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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““While a court of equity will reform contracts under many varying circumstances, still it has no power to make a new contract. Its power is simply to reform a contract already made. J. W. Mabb is not a party to the contract, and a court of equity can neither add additional parties nor substitute other parties for those already appearing upon the face of the writing. J. J. Mabb acted as one of the contracting parties, and whether he did it by mistake, through ignorance of law or fact, or did it with knowledge of everything, we deem an immaterial matter. A court of equity cannot change an agreement between J. J. Mabb and Merriam to an agreement between J. W. Mabb and Merriam. This would be to make a new contract, and not to reform a contract already made.””
2 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.