Wallace. v. Johnstone’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 federal appellate · 19 state decisions

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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““A deed of lands, absolute in form with general warranty of title, and an agreement by the vendee to reconvey the property to the vendor or a third person, upon his payment of a fixed sum within a specified time, do not of themselves constitute a mortgage; nor will they be held to operate as a mortgage, unless it is clearly shown, either by parol evidence or by the attendant circumstances, such as the condition and relation of the parties, or gross inadequacy of price, to have been intended by the parties as a security for a loan or an existing debt.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Rubenstine v. Powers · Johnson v. National Bank of Commerce

2. “If this question could be determined by an inspection of the written papers alone, the transaction was clearly not a mortgage, but an absolute sale and deed, accompanied by an independent contract between the vendee and a third person, not a party to the sale, to convey the lands to him upon his payment of a fixed sum within a certain time. Upon their face there are none of the indicia by which courts are led to construe such instruments to be intended as a mortgage or security for a loan; nothing from which there can be inferred the existence of a debt, or the relation of borrower and lender between the parties to the deeds or between the pai’ties to the contract. ... A deed of lands, absolute in form with general warranty of title, and an agreement by the vendee to reconvey the property to the vendor or a third person, upon his payment of a fixed sum within a specified time, do not of themselves constitute.a mortgage; nor will they be held to operate as a mortgage, unless it is clearly shown, either by parol evidence or by the attendant circumstances, such as the condition and relation of the parties, or gross inadequacy of price, to have been intendéd by the parties as a security for a loan or .an existing debt.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Bogk v. Gassert

3. “The evidence, as it appears in the record1, is much less contradictory than is usual in such cases where it is sought by parol testimony to change an absolute conveyance, with a collateral agreement for a repurchase, into a mortgage. With the single exception of the appellant, all the witnesses conversant with the negotiations between the parties unite in giving testimony tending to show that the transaction was a purchase of the lands by the appellee * * *.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United Nat'l Corp. v. Commissioner