Herbert Estate’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

28 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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““This case arose before the passage of the Act of May 24, 1945, P.L. 944, which, according to its express provision, became effective only upon its enactment. The present controversy, therefore, as is admitted by all the parties, must be adjudicated under the decisional law as it existed prior to the enactment of that statute. By a continuous line of decisions stemming from Dundas’s Appeal, 64 Pa. 325 , extending through Orr’s Estate, 283 Pa. 476 , 129 A. 565 ; McCullough’s Estate, 292 Pa. 177 , 140 A. 865 ; Clark v. Provident Trust Co. of Philadelphia, 329 Pa. 421 , 198 A. 36 , and culminating in Kane v. Girard Trust Company, 351 Pa. 191 , 40 A. 2d 466 (see also Brereton Estate, 355 Pa. 45, 51 , 48 A. 2d 868 , 870, 871), it was consistently held that, where such a fiduciary had agreed to sell property, he not only could, but must, repudiate the agreement at any time before final settlement and conveyance of the title if he received an offer for the property substantially higher than the price for which he had originally contracted to sell it. It was said in McCullough’s Estate, supra, (p. 181, A. p. 866): ‘It is not what was or what could have been obtained for the property, but what can be obtained for it that is the determining factor.’ It was not merely a power on the part of the fiduciary but a duty to dispose of trust property upon the most advantageous terms which it was possible to secure for the benefit of the estate, irrespective of the fact that a prior agreement w”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In re Pew Memorial Trust No. 1