Stevens v. McDowell’s Empirical Analysis
1940
Citation profile
21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 21 later decisions — most recently August 1993
21 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 Drollinger v. Carson · Marquez v. Cave · Ditzen v. Given · Bishop v. Fischer · Estey v. Holdren
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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The bench and bar of this state have long been familiar with a form of real-estate contract between two parties, whom for convenience we will name as the owner-vendor and the tenant-vendee, in which the former names a price at which he will sell the property and names a specified amount to be paid monthly, and in which he agrees to let the latter into possession upon condition that if the monthly payments are made until their aggregate sum amounts to the specified purchase price the property shall be . conveyed to the latter; but if the tenant-vendee fails in his monthly payments then ... he shall have no interest in the property .... If the down payment by the tenant-vendee has been negligible, and his monthly payments have been but few or have only been paid irregularly, to the manifest loss of the owner-vendor, the contract will ordinarily be enforced according to its terms. [Citations omitted.] “But if the monthly payments have been made with reasonable promptness and have been made for such a length of time that their aggregate amount constitutes the equivalent of a substantial payment of the purchase price . . . then equity may not permit the interest of the tenant-vendee to be summarily extinguished . . . but will deal with the situation according to equitable principles, and may require proceedings as in equitable foreclosure before the interest of the latter can be extinguished. Cases illustrating various- aspects of this doctrine run through all our reports. [Citat”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.