Meyer v. Stein’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

21 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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Restrictions upon the free alienation of property are not favored by the law and are usually strictly construed against those seeking to enforce them. This rule applies to building restrictions. However, if building restrictions are reasonable, they are uniformly enforced by courts and are given the effect intended by the parties as gathered from the conveyance in the light of surrounding circumstances. * * * “No one can read the restrictive covenants in the deeds conveying this property and escape the conclusion that it was the intention of the parties to, and they did, limit the use of the property to residential purposes. If we should accept appellant’s argument that such covenants related only to the building of the homes, and placed no limitation upon their use after they were once constructed in conformity with the restrictions, then building restrictions would render the owners of property no benefit and parties incorporating such restrictive covenants in their deeds would be doing a vain thing.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Hoover v. Waggoman