Watts v. Kellar’s Empirical Analysis
56 F. 1 · 1893
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2001
2 federal appellate · 9 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 Willard v. Tayloe · Russell v. Southard · Brown v. Slee · Raymond v. San Gabriel, Val. Land & Water 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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““An option to sell land is as valid as an option to buy. When one holding a buyer’s option makes his election to purchase, and tenders the money according to the terms of the contract, it is the duty of the seller to accept the price, and execute a deed to the purchaser for the property; and when one holding an option to sell elects to make the sale, and tenders a deed, it is the duty of the buyer to accept the deed and pay the price. Such contracts are perfectly valid, and it is now well settled that a court of equity may decree a specific performance of them. A suit for that purpose is, of course, subject to the general rule that the specific enforcement of contracts for the purchase or sale of land is not a matter of course, but rests in the discretion of the court, in view of all the circumstances. -But the rules by which the court will be guided, in a suit like this, in decreeing or refusing a • specific enforcement, are the same that they are in other suits for the specific enforcement of contracts relating to land. Cases may be found which hold that such contracts will not be specifically enforced, because the right to a specific enforcement is not mutual. The want of mutuality of right to a specific performance of a contract, which sometimes precludes its ■enforcement in equity, has no application to an option contract of the character we are considering. The purchaser of an option to buy or sell land pays for the privilege of his election. It is that very privilege w”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.