Smith v. Autry’s Empirical Analysis
1917
Citation profile
9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently September 1992
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 Burkett v. Griffith · Hobbs v. Smith · Independent Cotton Oil Co. v. Beacham · Barkly v. Copeland · Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Co. v. Martin
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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The gravamen or gist of the plaintiffs’ cause of action is that the acts of the defendants wrongfully prevented the plaintiffs from making a sale of said property to the said Gillette; the prevention of the plaintiffs from entering into an enforceable contract with the said Gillette. If the plaintiffs should have entered into an enforceable contract with the said Gillette, the law seems to be settled that the plaintiffs’ action then would have been to enforce his contract against the prospective buyer, and not against the plaintiffs for damages for slander of title. The very thing which the defendants contend was necessary to complete their cause of action against the defendants would have defeated their cause of action against them. .. . [T]hat the plaintiffs had a prospective purchaser who would have purchased had it not been for the acts of the defendants complained of is one of the essential elements that the plaintiffs must establish in order to establish their cause of action.”
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.