Williams v. . Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1942
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 90 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 106 later decisions — most recently December 2025 · most notably 199 N.C. App. 687 - Hardin v. KCS International, Inc. (2009), Gas House, Inc. v. Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1976)
4 federal appellate · 90 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.
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 106 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“`In this State, it is held that one who signs a paper writing is under a duty to ascertain its contents, and in the absence of a showing that he was wilfully misled or misinformed by the defendant as to these contents, or that they were kept from him in fraudulent opposition to his request, he is held to have signed with full knowledge and assent as to what is therein contained.'”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“It is generally held, and is the law in this State, that mere unfulfilled promises cannot be made the basis for an action of fraud. If, however, a promise is made fraudulently — that is, with no intention to carry it out, thus being a misrepresentation of a material fact, the state of the promisor’s mind, and with intention that it shall be acted upon, and it is acted upon to the promisee’s injury — then, it will sustain an action based on fraud and misrepresentation, and the plaintiff will be entitled to legal or equitable relief.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“mere unfulfilled promises cannot be made the basis of an action for fraud.”
2 later decisions 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.