Wheelock v. Clark’s Empirical Analysis
1913
Citation profile
14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently October 1976
14 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 Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance v. Neafus · John R. Davis Lumber Co. v. Scottish Union & National Insurance · Julius Winter, Jr. & Co. v. Forrest
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ 'An application for life insurance is not a contract. It is only a proposal to contract on certain terms which the company to which it is presented is at perfect liberty to accept or reject. It does not in any way bind the company to accept the risk proposed, to make the contract requested, or to issue a policy. * * * Until the meeting of the minds of the parties upon the terms of the same agreement is effected by an acceptance of the proposition contained in the application, or of some other proposition, each party is entirely free from contractual obligations. The applicant may withdraw his application and refuse to take insurance on any terms. * * * Nor is the freedom of the parties to retire from the negotiations or to modify their proposals, at any time before some proposition has been agreed upon by both, ever lost or affected by the fact that the applicant accompanies his proposal or application with a promise to pay the premium in the form of promissory notes, or even by an actual payment thereof. Until his application is ac cepted, such a promise or payment is conditional upon the acceptance, and his application is still no more than a proposition to take and pay for the insurance if the company accepts his terms. ’ ’ ’”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““We have no hesitancy in holding that no contract of insurance was entered into between Clark and the company. His application was a mere proposal to enter into a contract and until accepted by the company no contractual relations existed between them and until such acceptance he had a perfect right to withdraw his proposal.””
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.