Alexander v. McEwen’s Empirical Analysis
2006
Citation profile
50 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 50 later decisions — most recently January 2025 · most notably Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Coughlin (2007), Pulaski County v. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. (2007)
50 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 First Nat. Bank of Crossett v. Griffin · Ultracuts Ltd. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. · Coleman v. Regions Bank · Missouri Pac. Rd., Thompson, Trustee v. Strohacker · Carter v. Four Seasons Funding Corp.
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 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The first rule of interpretation of a contract is to give to the language employed the meaning that the parties intended. In construing any contract, we must consider the sense and meaning of the words used by the parties as they are taken and understood in their plain and ordinary meaning. The best construction is that which is made by viewing the subject of the contract, as the mass of mankind would view it, as it may be safely assumed that such was the aspect in which the parties themselves viewed it. It is also a well-settled rule in construing a contract that the intention of the parties is to be gathered, not from particular words and phrases, but from the whole context of the agreement.”
4 later decisions 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.