Boyd v. Anderson

said, "that a person who had purchased a lottery ticket, which happened to come up a blank, might with equal propriety say that the contract was nudum pactum, and bring his action to recover back the price of the ticket."

The reasoning of this case is correct, if understood with relation to sales of real property, where there is no such thing as implied responsibility, or quasi contracts, as in the civil law.

By the law of England, which is believed to be our law in this respect, there is a settled and uniform distinction between the sales of real and personal property. In the first, a man is…