Ricks v. . Batchelor’s Empirical Analysis
1945
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently January 1987
16 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is true that when a debtor conveys land to a creditor by deed absolute in form and at the same time gives a note or otherwise obligates himself to pay the debt, and takes from the grantee an agreement to reconvey upon payment of the debt, the transaction is a mortgage. Robinson v. Willoughby, 65 N.C., 520 . But if the agreement leaves it entirely optional with the debtor whether he will pay the debt and redeem the land or not, and does not bind him to do so, or continue his obligation to pay, the relationship of mortgagor and mortgagee may not be held to continue unless the parties have so intended. The distinction is pointed out in O’Briant v. Lee, 212 N.C., 793 , 195 S.E., 15 , where Connor, J., speaking for the Court, quotes with approval from 41 C.J., 325, as follows: ‘If it is a debt which the grantor is bound to pay, which the grantee might collect by proper proceedings, and for which the deed to the land is to stand as security, the transaction is a mortgage; but if it is entirely optional with the grantor to pay the money and receive a reconveyance, he has not the rights of a mortgagor, but only the privilege of repurchasing the property.’ And in Pomeroy’s Equity Jurisprudence (sec. 1194) it is said: ‘Where land is conveyed by an absolute deed, and an instrument is given back as a part of the same trans-ation, not containing the condition ordinarily inserted in mortgages, but being an agreement that the grantee will reconvey the premises if the grantor shall pay a”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[w]hether any particular transaction amounts to a mortgage or an option of repurchase depends upon the real intention of the parties, as shown on the face of the writings, or by extrinsic evidence, and the distinction is whether the debt existing prior to the conveyance is still subsisting or has been satisfied by the conveyance. If the relation of debtor and creditor still continues, equity will regard the transaction as a method of securing a debt — and hence a mortgage.”
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.