Skyles v. Burge’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently October 2009
10 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 Mahoney v. Furches · Hill v. Air Shields, Inc. · Dugan v. Grzybowski · 179 Pa. Super. 114 - Hensel v. Cahill · Arthur v. Burkich
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.
“Since the early nineteenth century, the general rule has been that a debtor cannot, without the lender’s consent, prepay a mortgage debt. [Under this “perfect tender in time” rule,] without a prepayment clause, the mortgagor could not compel the mortgagee to accept payment or to discharge the mortgage before it was due.... At the present time, the perfect tender in time rule remains in effect in the majority of states, except where it has been modified by judicial decision or by statute. The underlying reasons for the adoption of this principle are varied. One justification for denying a mortgagor’s prepayment right is that a mortgage is an investment instrument designed to secure for the mortgagee not only a regular flow of income over a definite period of time, but also income at a predictable rate of return. Another rationale for disallowing prepayment is that the existence of a promissory note in which the debt is fully amortized by specific payments in equal monthly installments suggests that no early payment is permitted. In addition, courts have relied on the fact that the rights of the mortgagee and mortgagor are equal and reciprocal in that a mortgagee cannot enforce the payment of the debt before its maturity and a mortgagor cannot compel his mortgagee to accept payment before it is due. Relying on principles of contract law, courts have found, however, that the precise language of the promissory note often entitles a mortgagor to prepay his indebtedness. Thus, prom”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Simpson v. Simpson“Despite the Abbe case and other historical antecedents of the rule of perfect tender in time, it would seem, at least in terms of residential real estate, that a mortgagor could discharge the debt by payment in full of all the principal due and all the accrued and unaccrued interest that would be due over the term of the note.”
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.