Harris v. Dawson’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently March 1991 · most notably Erie Telecommunications, Inc. v. City of Erie (1988), Brokers Title Company Inc v. St Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Company (1979)
2 federal appellate · 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 Black v. American International Corp. · Heights Land Co. v. Swengel's Estate · 163 Pa. Super. 352 - Tudesco Et Ux. v. Wilson · Dorff v. Schmunk · Coates v. Cotteral
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.
“DEFAULT BY BUYERS. Should BUYERS default in performing this agreement, any sum or sums paid on account shall be retained by SELLERS, either on account of the purchase money, the balance of which shall be recoverable in an action of assumpsit, or as liquidated damages, as SELLERS shall elect, and in the latter case this contract shall become null and void.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“the essence of contract law is the objective intent of the parties and when there has been no allegation of mistake, fraud, overreaching or the like, it is not the function of the court to redraft a contract to be more favorable to a given party than the agreement he chose to enter.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““ ‘The action at law in assumpsit for the purchase price is a familiar remedy available, under our blended system of law and equity, to the vendor of land as a substitute for a bill in equity for specific performance of the contract of sale. Indeed, by an application of the rule that equity will not act where there is an adequate remedy at law, a bill in equity whose object is simply to enforce payment of the purchase money will not be entertained: Kauffman’s App., 55 Pa. 383 ; Dech’s App., 57 Pa. 467 ; Smaltz’s App., 99 Pa. 310 ; Dorff v. Schmunk, 197 Pa. 298 , 47 A. 113 . The same principles which govern the remedy in equity apply with equal force to the remedy at law . . . ’””
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.