Martel v. Bearce’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently March 2025
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.
Relationships
Relies on Horvath v. National Mortgage Co. · McMahon v. Gray · Inhabitants of Town of Lincolnville v. Perry · Smith v. Varney · First Auburn Trust Co. v. Buck
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The only interest in the real estate, except the right to possession, remaining in the owner is the right to redeem the property upon paying the taxes due plus interest and costs. The passage of eighteen months’ time during which the taxes remain unpaid places complete record title in the municipality. * * * The former owner's right of redemption —and, in fact, his title — are extinguished. As in the case of the common law mortgagor, there remains only the contingency that he may be able (if he chooses to try) to demonstrate in a legal action a failure in the procedure by which his title was lost.” (Emphasis ours.)”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“If because he has attached and levied upon and sold property of someone other than the debtor the creditor is required to return the payment to the purchaser, the creditor has lost nothing to which he was ever entitled. His execution remains unsatisfied and the property of the debtor is still subject to his attachment. All three parties purchaser, creditor and debtor are returned substantially to the positions they occupied before the invalid sale.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“When that equity of redemption has been lost by the expiration of the statutory period, nothing remains in the mortgagor except the contingency that exceptional circumstances may exist which will entitle him to equitable relief. His legal title was conveyed when he executed the mortgage and his equitable title disappeared with the expiration of the period of redemption. Smith v. Varney, Me., 309 A.2d 229 (1973).”
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.