Wilson v. Holyfield’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 2 district · 164 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 239 later decisions — most recently December 2023 · most notably Amos v. Coffey (1984), Eure v. Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Corp. (2002)
9 federal appellate · 2 district · 164 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 W. F. Magann Corp. v. Virginia-Carolina Electrical Works, Inc. · Manss-Owens Co. v. H. S. Owens & Son · Meade v. Wallen · Virginian Railway Co. v. Avis · Hutchison v. King
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 239 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is the function of the court to construe the contract made by the parties, not to make a contract for them. The question for the court is what did the parties agree to as evidenced by their contract. The guiding light in the construction of a contract is the intention of the parties as expressed by them in the words they have used, and courts are bound to say that the parties intended what the written instrument plainly declares.”
18 later decisions quote this exact passage“[W]e have an equal opportunity to consider the words of the contract within the four corners of the instrument itself.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“A well-settled principle of contract law dictates that where an agreement is complete on its face, is plain and unambiguous in its terms, the court is not at liberty to search for its meaning beyond the instrument itself. A contract is not deemed ambiguous merely because the parties disagree as to the meaning of the language they used to express their agreement.”
3 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.