Wheless v. Wheless’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 1 district · 6 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The only essential requisite is an absolute expression of an intention that the land, shall be sold and turned into money, or that the money shall be expended in the purchase of land. If this intention is sufficiently expressed, the circumstance that the land has not yet been sold and turned into money, or that the money has not yet been laid out in land, is the very condition of fact in which the doctrine of conversion comes into play, to which the maxim, ‘Equity regards that as done which ought to be done,’ applies. The true test in all such cases is a simple one: Has the will or deed creating the trust absolutely directed, or has the contract stipulated, that the real estate be turned into personal or the personal estate be turned into real? * * * The whole scope and meaning of the fundamental principle underlying the doctrine áre involved in the existence of a duty resting upon the trustees or other parties to do the specified act, for, unless the equitable ought exists, there is no room for the operation of the maxim, ‘Equity regards that as done which ought to be done.’ The rule is therefore firmly settled that, in order to work a conversion while the property is yet actually unchanged in form, there must be a clear and imperative direction in the will, deed, or settlement, or a clear imperative agreement in the contract, to convert the property; that is, to sell the land for money, or to lay out the money in the purchase of land. If the act of converting (that is, the”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Bartlett v. Gill

2. “[U]nless the sale or purchase contemplated is expressly directed to be made at a specified time in the future, or upon the happening of some particular event, which may or may not happen, the conversion takes place, in wills, as from the death of the testator; and in deeds, and other instruments inter vivos, as from the date of their execution.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Walker v. Elam (In Re Fowler)