Law of Real Estate Including Options, Purchases, Sales, Exchanges, The duties and liabilities of Principals By WILLIAM SLEE WALKER (OF THE CINCINNATI BAR) CINCINNATI, O. THE W. H. ANDERSON COMPANY 1910 PREFACE Under our dual system, Imperium in Imperio, the various States, through their respective high courts of judicature, give us a richness and a variety of authoritative decisions. "I do not call one greater and one smaller. That which fills its period and place is equal to any," whether it comes from Massachusetts or Montana, from Michigan or from Mississippi. In the preface to his Commentary on Agency and Agents (1876) Prof. Wharton says: "I have thought it advisable to introduce all reported judicial decisions, no matter how cumulative, which have come to my notice in connection with the topic discussed. No doubt in this way my notes may appear overloaded and my table of cases redundant; but it must be recollected that Agency is the creature of usage as established by the courts; tnat usage can only be settled by cumulative rulings, and that, under our American system, there is no State whose adjudication can be safely omitted in such a commentary as the present." It is believed, also, that a need exists for a treatise confined to one branch of the law of Agency, namely, real estate. The general treatises fail to differentiate some of its peculiar features, thereby tending to perplex or mislead the lawyer and the jurist. This is the apology, if it be needed, for adding another to the accumulated heap of works on the law. In the preparation of this work the aim has been to present the law in the exact words of the courts, and to devote the book to setting forth their language, the utterances of the judges upon the various phases of the law of real estate agency. It is believed that in this way the lessons conveyed will be more impressive, and will afford a clearer conception of the underlying principles upon which the superstructure is reared. As a further illustration of this feature a large part of the |