Stephenson v. Calliham’s Empirical Analysis
1926
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently September 2004
2 federal appellate · 15 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.
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Under this state of facts we hold that the provision for giving notice of an intention of forfeiture, and allowing 60 days to the lessee in which to-‘do and perform the necessary thing to prevent forfeiture’ does not apply. The lease period had already fully expired through the cessation of drilling. The only act which could possibly have kept the lease in force after its stipulated period was continued drilling operations, and, those operations having once wholly ceased, the life of the lease could not be thereafter restored, for there was no provision or permission for a resumption of those operations when once discontinued. No purpose could be served by the lessor giving the lessee notice of an intended cancellation, for there was nothing the lessee could do to ‘prevent’ such cancellation. He could not continue an operation which had in fact been discontinued for a period of 6 weeks, and he could not revive the lease under any of its provisions by resuming operations. By his own act of destroying the last spark of life in the lease, he cut himself off from the only means of preserving it, and is now without a remedy. “We therefore hold, particularly in deference to the rules that oil and gas leases shall be strictly construed in favor of the lessor, and that, contrary to the general rule, forfeitures of such leases are favored, that by the terms of this lease it was fully and irrevocably terminated upon cessation of drilling operations, and that appellees properly brought”
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.