388 Pa. Super. 37 - Hessenthaler v. Farzin’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently December 2025 · most notably 26 Cal. 4th 261 - Donovan v. RRL Corp. (2001), Flight Systems, Inc. v. Electronic Data Systems Corp. (1997)
2 federal appellate · 18 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 Murray v. United States · 360 Pa. Super. 119 - Ecksel v. Orleans Construction Co. · Beeruk Estate · Radke v. Brenon · Irving v. Goodimate Co.
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The purpose of the Statute [of Frauds] is to prevent the possibility of enforcing unfounded, fraudulent claims by requiring that contracts pertaining to interests in real estate be supported by written evidence signed by the party creating the interest. Pennsylvania courts have emphasized that the Statute is not designed to prevent the performance or enforcement of oral contracts that in fact were made. Therefore[:] [W]e should always be satisfied with some note or memorandum that is adequate ... to convince the court that there is no serious possibility of consummating fraud by enforcement. When the mind of the court has reached such a conviction as that, it neither promotes justice nor lends respect to the statute to refuse enforcement because of informality in the memorandum or its incompleteness in detail.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The memorandum can consist of several writings, (a) if each writing is signed by the party to be charged and the writings indicate that they relate to the same transaction, or (b) though only one writing is signed if (i) the signed writing is physically annexed to the other writing by the party to be charged, or (ii) the signed writing refers to the unsigned writing, or (iii) it appears from examination of all the writings that the signed writing was signed with reference to the unsigned writings.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[t]he purpose of the Statute is to prevent the possibility of enforcing unfounded, fraudulent claims by requiring that contracts pertaining to interests in real estate be supported by written evidence signed by the party creating the interest____ Pennsylvania courts have emphasized that the Statute is not designed to prevent the performance or enforcement of oral contracts that in fact were made.”
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.