Sawyer v. Matthews’s Empirical Analysis
1936
Citation profile
4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently December 1984
4 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 Womack v. Tankersley · Bruce's v. Bibb's · Pryor v. East · Hartman v. Melfa Banking Co. · Seventh Street Garage Co. v. Mercer
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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“However, the law does not favor, but leans against the destruction of contracts because of uncertainty. Therefore the Courts will, if possible, so construe the contract as to carry into effect the reasonable intention of the parties if that can be ascertained. Though there are some formal imperfections in a written contract, still it is sufficient if it contains matter which will enable the Court to ascertain the terms and conditions on which the parties intended to bind themselves. (Emphasis added.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““When a case is heard by a judge in open court without the intervention of a jury his judgment upon a conflict of evidence has the same weight as the jury’s verdict (Seventh St. Gar. Co. v. Mercer, 150 Va. 269 , 142 S. E. 350 ), and this is true in chancery where the evidence is given in open court.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Baird v. Crank
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.