Collins v. Goetsch’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently March 2019
19 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 Houk v. Ross · Berger v. State · Pulver v. Mascolo · SCHULMAN v. Serrill · MacDonald v. Painter
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.
“Said lot shall contain no more than one single-family dwelling, except, where a second living unit is legally permitted, any such second unit shall be a part of and annexed to the main dwelling, and maintain an outward appearance of a single-family dwelling rather than of a duplex.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[R]estrictive covenants are to be liberally construed in favor of the grantee and against the grantor, and substantial doubt or ambiguity is to be resolved in favor of the free and unrestricted use of property. Although in some instances restrictive covenants may increase the value of property, they do nonetheless raise title problems and impair alienability. Therefore, restrictive covenants are to be strictly construed against the grantor because the limitations and prohibitions they impose may be felt over a very long period of time, and it is not too much to insist that they be carefully drafted to state exactly what is intended no more and no less. In thus attempting to construe ambiguous covenants, a court must look to the expressed intention of the parties as may be ascertained from the entire language of the covenant agreement.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Sandomire v. Brown“As this court has stated, [t]he “critical time” for determining whether there was a sufficient understanding of the covenants on the part of the purchasers with regard to the meaning intended by the original grantors is the time of purchase. Otherwise, there would be nothing to prevent the original grantors from subsequently altering or diminishing the purchasers’ ownership rights in the land.”
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.