Williams v. . Townsend’s Empirical Analysis
1865
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 1963 · most notably Wyoming Building & Loan Ass'n v. Mills Const. Co. (1928), Lewis v. . Duane (1894)
2 federal appellate · 26 state decisions — followed in 13 states
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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“‘A mortgage is a mere security for a debt; and there is no such relation of trust or confidence between the maker and holder of a mortgage as prevents the latter from acquiring title to its subject-matter, either under his own or any other valid lien.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Lewis v. Duane
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.