West v. Downer’s Empirical Analysis
1962
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions — most recently May 2018 · most notably Thompson Co Inc v. Partridge M C (1981), University Computing Co. v. Lykes-Youngstown Corp. (1974)
9 federal appellate · 29 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 Williams v. Manchester Building Supply Co. · Shropshire v. Rainey · Simpson & Harper v. Sanders & Jenkins · Wehunt v. Pritchett · Smith v. Smith
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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ * * *. The first requirement of the law relative to contracts is that there must be a meeting of the minds of the parties, and mutuality, (Citations omitted,) and in order for the contract to be valid the agreement must ordinarily be • expressed plainly and explicitly enough to show what the parties agreed upon. (Citations omitted.) * *”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“[I]n order for the contract 3 to be valid the agreement must ordinarily be expressed plainly and explicitly enough to show what the parties agreed upon. A contract cannot be enforced in any form of action if its terms are incomplete or incomprehensible. There are instances when certain deficiencies or ambiguities may be explained by facts aliunde to the instrument itself. However, information of such extrinsic nature may not be utilized to supply that which is essential to constitute a valid contract.”
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.