Adams v. Lee’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““All the time, therefore, the parties have had title to the machinery distinct from their title' to the land, and this fact of itself is conclusive that the former was personalty; for to constitute a fixture there must not only be physical annexation in some form to the realty, but there must be unity of title, so that a conveyance of the realty would of necessity convey the fixture also. When the ownership of the land is in one person, and of the thing affixed to it is in another, arid in its nature is capable of severance without injury to the former, the latter cannot, in contemplation of law, become a part off the former, but must necessarily remain distinct property, to be used and dealt with as personal estate only. And the fact that the owner of the thing affixed to the freehold has also an undivided interest in the latter, cannot render the former a fixture when the interests are different in extent. A thing cannot, as to an undivided interest therein, be real estate, and as to another undivided interest be personalty. It must be the one thing or the other. And the position which is taken by Lee in this case involves this absurdity: that Kaufman, at the time when he and Kinney were severally the owners of an undivided half of the land, might have sold that, and, as a necessary consequence, transferred an • undivided one-half of the machinery also, though the whole of the machinery belonged to Kinney as exclusive owner. This would be the necessary result if the machine”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Paeth v. Squire · Lansing Iron & Engine Works v. Walker