Spates v. Spates’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
8 district · 19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 36 later decisions — most recently December 2017 · most notably Jones v. Hyatt Insurance Agency, Inc. (1999), 24 Md. App. 588 - Trupp v. Wolff (1975)
8 district · 19 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 Shillman v. Hobstetter · Marlboro Shirt Co. v. American District Telegraph Co. · MacKubin v. Curtiss-Wright Corp. · Marshall v. Marshall · Hamilton & Spiegel, Inc. v. Board of Education
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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“What takes this case out of the majority rule, as adopted by the Restatement (Second), Contracts § 142 (Tent.Draft 1967), however, is that Robert was 17 at the time the agreement of separation and property settlement was entered into. There is substantial authority for the view that once an infant is made the donee beneficiary of a contract between a promisor and promisee, his acceptance of the benefit is assumed, and his rights under the contract are indefeasible, unless he rejects the benefits, or a right to alter the provision made for him has been reserved, 2 Williston, supra § 396, at 1067; see 4 Corbin, supra § 814, at 247 (1951, Supp.1971, at 97-98) and Restatement (Second), Contracts § 142, comment d, at 60 (Tent.Draft No. 3, 1967). There is what Williston terms “weighty authority” in support of this view: James v. Pawsey, 162 Cal.App.2d 740 , 328 P.2d 1023, 1028 (1958); Waterman v. Morgan, 114 Ind. 237 , 16 N.E. 590 ,' 592 (1888); Henderson v. McDonald, 84 Ind. 149, 153 (1882); Rhodes v. Rhodes, 266 S.W.2d 790, 792-793 (Ky.1953); Quinn v. Thigpen, 266 N.C. 720 , 147 S.E.2d 191, 194 (1966); Thayer v. Thayer, 189 N.C. 502 , 127 S.E. 553, 555, 556 (1925); Plunkett v. Atkins, 371 P.2d 727, 731-732 (Okl.1962); Brill v. Brill, 282 Pa. 276 , 127 A. 840, 843 (1925); Anno., 39 A.L.R. 434 , 448-449 (1925); Note, Third Party Beneficiary Concept: A Proposal, 57 Colum.L.Rev. 406, 420 (1957), and little authority to the contrary, Lehman v. Stout, 261 Minn. 384 , 112 N.W.2d 640, 64”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he agreement of separation and property settlement was not under seal, and standing alone, would have been subject to the three year statute of limitations provided by Maryland Code (1957, 1972 Repl. Vol.) Art. 57, § 1. However, once the agreement was incorporated into a decree, we shall assume for the purposes of the case that the agreement was subject to the 12 year period applied to specialties.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. O'Hearn v. O'Hearn
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.