Ferrell v. Wood’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ ‘. . . it seems to us that to hold that a person is liable in damages for the nonperformance of a contract which he is under no legal obligation to perform would be illogical, and without analogy or precedent in the law. The very proposition involves a legal inconsistency. We think that on legal principles such a contract must be held void for all purposes, and not to constitute the basis of any action against the obligor. There are also strong practical considerations in favor of this view. While it is true, as counsel suggests, that to hold the husband liable for damages would not deprive him or his family of their homestead, yet to force him to the alternative of securing his wife’s signature to the conveyance, or of being mulcted in damages for not doing so, and to place the wife in the dilemma of either having to sign the deed or see her husband thus mulcted in damages might, and naturally would, often indirectly defeat the very object of the statute. There is nothing unjust to the obligee in holding such a contract absolutely void for all purposes: He is bound to know the law, and he always has actual notice, or the means of obtaining actual notice, of the fact that the land with which he is about to deal is a homestead.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Penney v. Vessells