Lay v. Neville’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 state decisions

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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It was not intended by the fifteenth section of the statute of frauds to make a sale void, as against creditors and purchasers of the vendor unless the vendee shall perform “in every ease what might in some cases be an impossibility. It was intended that the vendee should immediately take and continuously hold the possession of the goods purchased, in the manner and accompanied with such plain and unmistakable acts of possession, control and ownership as a prudent Iona fide purchaser would do, in the exercise of his rights over the property, so that all persons might have notice that he owned and had possession of the property.” “The acts that will constitute a delivery will vary in the different classes of cases, and will depend very much upon the character and quantity of the property sold, as well as the circumstances of each particular case. The same acts are not necessary to make a good delivery of a ponderous article, like a block of granite or a stack of hay, as would be required in case of an article of small bulk as a parcel of bullion. It might properly be required that there should me a manual delivery of a single sack of grain at the moment of its sale, but upon the sale of two^ thousand sacks, this could not be done without incurring great and unnecessary expense, and departing from the usual course of business. The same is true of the acts that may be required to manifest 'actual and continued change of possession’ required by the statute. Each case must in a g”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Walters v. Ratliff