Wallace v. Cook’s Empirical Analysis
1921
Citation profile
7 federal appellate · 46 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions — most recently December 2015 · most notably McMahan v. New England Mutual Life Insurance (1989), Guthrie v. National Homes Corporation (1965)
7 federal appellate · 46 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 Murray v. Boyd · United Surety Co. v. Summers · Siler v. White Star Coal Co. · McDevitt v. Stokes · John King Co. v. L. & N. R. R.
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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““A promise to do what the promisor is already bound to do cannot be a consideration, for, if a person gets nothing in return for his promise but that to which he is already legally entitled, the consideration is unreal. Therefore, as a general rule, the performance of, or promise to perform, an existing legal obligation is not a valid consideration.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“if [a] contract is ambiguous and equally susceptible to two constructions, that one will be adopted which is the least advantageous to the [party] who prepared and printed it.”
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.