Hall v. Edwards’s Empirical Analysis
1920
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 47 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 52 later decisions — most recently September 1999 · most notably Woolsey v. Panhandle Refining Co. (1938), Morrison v. City of Fort Worth (1941)
4 federal appellate · 47 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 Brooks v. Martin · Floyd v. Patterson · Beer v. Landman · McBlair v. Gibbes · Wiggins v. Bisso
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 52 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Plaintiff in error not seeking the enforcement of the contract, and not invoking it to sustain a remedy, its illegality is no defense. To permit this defense, under the facts herein, would be to create a right or title in defendant in error dependent entirely upon such contract. It would, in effect, be to enforce the contract on her behalf, enabling her to reap a benefit thereunder. The same principles which govern courts in declining to enforce an illegal contract in aid of a plaintiff’s title inhibit its use to create a title in a defendant. Wooden v. Shotwell, 24 N. J. Law, 789.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage““When an illegal contract, of the character here in question, has been fully executed, and suit is not brought for the purpose of its enforcement, the courts will recognize and en force any new contract, right, or title resulting from its execution by the parties themselves. [Citing cases.] * * * But the illegality of the transaction did not prevent the exercise of the power of sale conferred upon the trustee, by agreement of the parties, through the deed in trust. At this sale plaintiff in error became the purchaser, and acquired the title remaining in Pennington and Hill through the retention of the vendor’s lien and that of defendant in error acquired by her deed from Hughes. The sale put an end to the illegal contract. It was fully executed by the parties themselves, acting through the trustee, who, in the execution of the trust, was the agent of all the parties thereto. Plaintiff in error’s title, though arising out of the illegal .contract, was not dependent upon it; that is, no action of the court was necessary to enforce the contract, or any of its terms, in order to make the title perfect ,or complete.””
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.