Beckman v. Brickley’s Empirical Analysis
1927
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently March 1960
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 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.
Relationships
Relies on Cushing v. Monarch Timber Co. · France v. Deep River Logging Co. · Engleson v. Port Crescent Shingle Co. · Crouch v. Forbes · Campbell v. Weston Basket & Barrel Co.
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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““While the contract contains apt words of conveyance, which, standing alone, might pass a present title to the timber, yet a reading of the contract as a whole makes it clear that this was not the intent of the parties. The contract is awkward in its wording, and contains provisions seemingly contradictory, but it provides that the logs are to be scaled and accounted for before they are removed from the premises, that payments are to be made at the time of the scaling of each two hundred thousand feet, and the continuance of the contract is made to depend on the payment due upon the first 400,000 feet of logs in the manner provided by the contract. These provisions are inconsistent with the passing of a present title, and clearly show, we think, that such was not the purpose of the parties. Construing the contract as meaning that the title to the timber was to pass to the purchasers only after its severance from the land and the payment of the agreed purchase price, there is a want of mutuality in the contract. The purchasers make no direct promise to sever and pay for the timber, nor do we think that such a promise can be implied from the language they have used. The contract is permissive, and binds the purchasers only in the case they perform. In other words, it amounts only to a license to sever and remove the timber, uncoupled with an interest. As such, it was revocable at any time by the sellers, and they did revoke, when they refused the .appellant permission to perfor”
1 later decision 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.