Smith v. Atkins’s Empirical Analysis
1846
Citation profile
1 district · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 27 later decisions — most recently August 1926 · most notably Mallin v. Wenham (1904), Farnum v. Hefner (1889)
1 district · 26 state decisions — followed in 11 states
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 Brainard v. Burton · Cilley v. Cushman
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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is, without doubt, true, that the sale of a thing not in existence is, upon general principles, inoperative, being merely executory, — that is, it confers no title in the thing bargained. But when the thing thereafter to be produced is the produce of land or other thing, the owner of the principal thing may retain the general property of the thing produced, unless there be fraud in the contract, and it be entered into merely to defeat creditors.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Dickey v. Waldo
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.