Phifer v. . Barnhart’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 2 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ . . . [T]he bargainee in an unregistered deed . . . [cannot] be displaced, or defeated, by the mere act of the bargainor in making another conveyance to a third party without notice, and whose deed may be registered. . . . “In Morris v. Ford, 2 Dev. Eq., 412 [ 17 N.C. 412 (1833) ], it is said, that such a bargainee, after the execution of his deed and before its registration, has not a mere equity in the land: he has an equity and an incomplete legal title, which will become a perfect legal title from the time of the execution of the deed, whenever the registration shall take effect.... “Again, in Walker v. Coltraine, 6 Ired. Eq., 79 [ 41 N. C. 79 (1849)], it was declared to be an error to say that an unregistered deed confers only an equity; that it is a legal conveyance, which, although it cannot be given in evidence until registered and therefore is not a perfect legal title, yet has an operation as a deed from its delivery; and it was emphatically said, that the ignorance of such a title in one, who might afterwards buy the land, could not impair it. “In Wilcox v. Sparks, 72 N.C., 208 [1875], Mr. Justice Reade, speaking for the court, says, that although a deed cannot be used to support a title until it is registered, still when registered it relates, and passes the title, as of the time of its execution....””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Williams v. North Carolina State Board of Education