Ledingham v. Bayless’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

23 state decisions

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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Where a promisor in an agreement to devise property has failed to meet his obligation, in whole or in part, the promisee will be given equitable relief if the contract is fair and reasonable and founded upon sufficient consideration and the parties cannot be restored to their original position. Equity grants relief in the nature of specific performance, holding the heirs, devisees, next of kin and personal representatives of the promisor to be trustees holding legal title to the property for the benefit of the promisee.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Unitas v. Temple · Strasburg v. Clark

2. “be considered the legal owner of one-half undivided interest’’ in the farm, "having purchased this with his effort”. It was on that basis that the court in Ledingham held the contract to be a valid contract to devise which was specifically enforceable. And it was in that context that the court said: “A promise that the promisee shall receive the property, or that it shall be his at the death of the promisor, is sufficient and it is not necessary that the means by which title is to pass shall be spelled out.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Unitas v. Temple · Shimp v. Shimp

3. ““Under the decision we have reached, Buddy will take a one-half share of the farm outright, rather than for life. The share he takes was not bequeathed to anyone else. He was merely given a lesser interest in that share than called for by the contract, which was the situation in the Wilson case. His brother and sister retain their equitable life interests in the other half share; and Buddy has no interest in that half, although his children take a two-thirds interest therein, according to and on the terms of the Will of their grandmother. We think that the one-third share of the personalty and the rest and residue, which his mother gave him in the 1954 will, were not intended to be in lieu of any rights that he had or that she intended to give him in the farm.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Bayless v. Mayfield