Webb v. Mullins’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

25 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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ ⅜ * * The manifest purpose of the statute is to dispense with the necessity of a seal to a valid conveyance, and of formal, technical words of grant, release, or transfer. The statute is remedial, and should be liberally construed, so far as may be necessary to suppress the mischief, and effectuate the purpose and. intent of the law-makers; but, being also in modification of the common law, it will not be presumed to modify it farther than is expressly declared; and construction, or intendment, will not be resorted to, for the purpose of extending its operation. ... “At common law, a deed must contain words of grant, release, or transfer, in order to pass the legal title to the land designed to be conveyed. The title to land can be transferred from one person to another, only by apposite and appropriate language. It was not the intention of the statute to dispense with the use of any words whatever, operative to convey. By the statute, the duty is imposed upon the courts to liberally construe the words employed in the conveyance as words of transfer, and give them effect and operation according to the intention of the grantor, to be collected from the entire instrument. There must, however, be some words intended as words of conveyance. They cannot be supplied by judicial interpolation.” (Emphasis added.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Lilly v. Earl