Willard v. Wood’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

77 federal appellate · 10 district · 22 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 160 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “still, being made with the .grantor only and for his benefit, upon a consideration moving from him alone, there being no privity of contract between the grantee and the mortgagee, and the latter not having known of or assented to the agreement at the time it was made, nor having since done or omitted any act on the faith of it, it follows that, by the law as declared by this court, and prevailing in the District of Columbia, the mortgagee cannot maintain an action at law against the grantee. Keller v. Ashford, 133 U. S. 610 , 620, 622; and National Bank v. Grand Lodge, 98 U. S. 123 , there cited. . . . Moreover, if the grantee’s liability was in assumpsit only, it was, in any view of the case, barred by the statute of limitations in three years.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Willard v. Wood

2. ““The case, therefore, stands just as if Ashford had himself received a deed by which he in terms agreed to pay a mortgage made by the grantor. In such a case, according to the general, not to say uniform, current of American authority, as shown by the cases collected in the briefs of counsel, the mortgagee is entitled in some form to enforce the agreement against the grantee; and much of the argument at the bar was devoted to the question whether his remedy should be at law or in equity. Upon the question whether the mortgagee could sue at law there is no occasion to examine the conflicting decisions in the courts of the sev eral States, because it is clearly settled in this court that he could not.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Home v. Selling

3. ““The remedies in the courts of the United States are at common law or in equity, not'according'to the practice of state courts, but according to the principles of common law and equity, as distinguished and defined in that country from which we derive our knowledge of these principles. And although the forms of proceedings and practice in the state courts shall have been adopted in the circuit court of the United States, yet the adoption of the state practice must not be understood as confounding the principles of law and equity, nor as authorizing legal and equitable claims to be blended together in one suit.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Alexander v. Mortgage Co. of Scotland, Ltd.