Schnitt v. McKellar’s Empirical Analysis
1968
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 55 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 63 later decisions — most recently December 2020 · most notably First Nat. Bank of Crossett v. Griffin (1992), Gibson v. Pickett (1974)
2 federal appellate · 55 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 Wolfe v. Stanford · Henderson v. Chesley · Holland v. Shaffer · Skelly Oil Company v. Johnson · Allies Oil Co. v. Ayers
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 63 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In construing a contract the court must, if possible, give effect to the intention of the parties as far as that can be done consistently with legal principles, and this intention must be ascertained from the whole contract. Dent v. Industrial Oil & Gas Co., 197 Ark. 95 , 122 S.W.2d 162 ; American Snuff Co. v. Stuckey, 197 Ark. 540 ,. 123 S.W.2d 1063 . To arrive at the intention of the parties to a contract, courts may acquaint themselves with the persons and circumstances and place themselves in the same situation as the parties who made the contract. American Snuff Co. v. Stuckey, supra. This is so the court can view the circumstances as they viewed them, so as to judge the meaning of the words and the correct application of the language to the things described. Taylor v. Taylor, 240 Ark. 376 , 399 S.W.2d 498 . The court should arrive at the sense in which the words used would naturally be understood, taking into consideration the circumstances surrounding the making of the contract, the situation and relation of the parties. Scrinopskie v. Meidert, 213 Ark. 336 , 210 S.W.2d 281 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Williams v. Cotten
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.