O'Briant v. . Lee’s Empirical Analysis
1938
Citation profile
5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently September 1984
5 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 State v. . Schoolfield · Williams v. Blue Ridge Building & Loan Ass'n · Robinson v. Willoughby. · Harding v. . Long · Ricks v. . Brooks
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.
“When the grantor in an absolute deed at the same time takes back from the grantee a written contract giving the former a certain length of time in which to redeem the premises by paying the amount of the debt, or the consideration for the deed, and binding the latter to reconvey on such redemption, the two papers together constitute a mortgage. And the effect of the transaction is not altered by the fact that the contract specifically limits the time for redemption, and makes the time an essential element in the right to redeem. But if the contract leaves it entirely optional with the grantor to redeem or not, and does not bind him to effect a redemption according to the agreement, it is rather to be held a conditional sale than a mortgage.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. O'Briant v. . Lee
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.