Shear v. Wright’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 9 state decisions

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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “While a contract may be so framed as to make the contracting party absolutely bound at all events, yet such is not the universal rule. In the present case the services agreed upon could not be rendered under the contract unless one or the other of the two animals could be had for the purpose. Their continued existence entered into the consideration of both parties as an indispensable element of performance. This being so, and there being nothing in the contract to indicate a substituted performance as within the design, the case seems to fall within the rule that under such circumstances the existence of the means of performance is a condition without which, in the absence of fault, there can be no liability. * * * The doctrine is reasonable, and assumes that both parties become interested in the continued existence of the subject of the condition.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In Re Roy's Estate