Martin v. Edwards’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 24 district · 28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 66 later decisions — most recently January 2019 · most notably Wolfgang v. Mid-America Motorsports, Inc. (1997), State Ex Rel. Stovall v. Reliance Insurance (2005)
9 federal appellate · 24 district · 28 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 Ronnau v. Caravan International Corporation · Anderson v. Rexroad · Burton v. Larkin · Bolack v. Sohio Petroleum Co.
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 66 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘Generally, where a person makes a promise to another for the benefit of a third person, that third person may maintain an action to enforce the contract even though he had no knowledge of the contract when it was made and paid no part of the consideration (Burton v. Larkin, 36 Kan 246, 13 Pac. 398 ; Anderson v. Rexroad, 175 Kan. 676 , 266 P.2d 320 ). But it is not everyone who may benefit from the performance of a contract between two other persons, or who may suffer from its nonperformance, who is permitted to enforce the contract by court action. Beneficiaries of contracts to which they are not parties have been divided into three classes: Donee beneficiaries, creditor beneficiaries, and incidental beneficiaries. Only those falling within the first two classes may enforce contracts made for their benefit (17A CJS, Contracts, § 519[4]b., p. 964; Accord: Burton v. Larkin, [ 36 Kan. 246 ]). These third person beneficiaries are defined in 2 Williston on Contracts, 3d ed., § 356, as follows: “ ‘ . . (1) Such person is a donee beneficiary if the purpose of the promisee in obtaining the promise of all or part of the performance thereof, is to make a gift to the beneficiary, or to confer upon him a right against the promisor to some performance neither due [nor supposed] or asserted to be due from the promisee to the beneficiary; (2) such person is a creditor beneficiary if no intention to make a gift appears from the terms of the promise, and performance of the promise will sat”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“one who the contracting parties intended should receive a direct benefit from the contract,”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he intention of the parties and the meaning of the contract are to be deduced from the instrument where its terms are plain and unambiguous.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.