Shepard v. Carpenter’s Empirical Analysis
1893
Citation profile
1 district · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently April 1987 · most notably Steen v. Rustad (1957), Radford v. McNeny (1937)
1 district · 26 state decisions — followed in 13 states
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.
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.
““A contract between two persons, upon a valid consideration, that they will, at some specified time in the future, at the election of one of them, enter into a particular contract, specifying its terms, is undoubtedly binding, and upon a breach thereof the party having the election or option may recover as damages what such-particular contract, to be entered into, would have been worth to him, if made. But an agreement that they will in the future make such contract as they may then agree upon amounts to nothing. An agreement to enter into negotiations, and agree upon the terms of a contract, if they can, can not be made the basis of a cause of action. There would be no way by which the court could determine what sort of a contract the negotiations would result in; no rule by which the court could ascertain whether any, or, if so, what, damages might follow a refusal to enter into such future contract. So, to be enforceable, a contract to enter into a future contract must specify all its material and essential terms, and leave none to be agreed upon as the result of future negotiations. . . . Where a final contract fails to express some matter, as, for instance, a time of payment, the law may imply the intention of the parties; but, where a preliminary contract leaves certain terms to be agreed upon for the purpose of a final contract, there can be no implication of what the parties will agree upon.” (Shepard v. Carpenter, 54 Minn. 153, 155, 156 , 55 N. W. 906 .)”
3 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.