Champion v. Whaley’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently November 2015 · most notably Rickborn v. Liberty Life Insurance (1996), Hofer v. St. Clair (1989)
2 federal appellate · 18 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 Harris & Harris Construction Co. v. Crain & Denbo, Inc. · Thomas-McCain, Inc. v. Siter · Hamrick v. Cooper River Lumber Co. · Dantzler Real Estate, Inc. v. Boland · Griffith v. Newell
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Champion was not required to show the loan would have closed “but for” the prevention of the condition. It is sufficient for the plaintiff to present evidence that the defendant’s prevention ‘substantially contributed’ to the nonoccurrence of the condition.... Once he has made such proof, the burden shifts to the defendant. If the defendant can show that the condition would not have occurred regardless of the prevention, then the prevention did not contrib ute materially to its nonoccurrence and the condition is not excused.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Thus, a broker who sues for his commission ordinarily has the burden of proving that any conditions precedent to the duty of the seller to pay have been fulfilled. But if the seller prevents a condition from occurring, then the condition is excused and his obligation to pay becomes unconditional. This is simply an instance of the general rule that one who prevents a condition of a contract cannot rely on the other party’s resulting nonperformance in an action on the contract.”
1 later decision 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.