In the case of William Christy, Plaintiff in Error v. William Young, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether a contract between two parties could be enforced when it was not written down and signed by both parties. The plaintiff argued that he had an oral agreement with the defendant to purchase land from him for $1,000 but that the defendant refused to honor it after receiving payment from another party for more money. The court found in favor of the plaintiff and held that contracts do not need to be written or signed in order for them to be enforceable under law; rather they must simply have been agreed upon by both parties and contain all necessary elements such as consideration (payment) and mutual assent (agreement). This ruling established precedent which has since been used countless times throughout American legal history.

In the case of William Christy v. William Young, the dissenting opinion was that a contract between two parties should not be voided due to an alleged mistake in one party's understanding of its terms. The majority had ruled that because Mr. Christy believed he would receive more money than what was actually agreed upon, his agreement with Mr. Young should be considered voidable and thus unenforceable by law. In dissent, it was argued that this ruling undermined basic principles of contract law which require both parties to understand their obligations under any given agreement before entering into it; if either party is mistaken about those obligations then they must bear the consequences for their own lack of knowledge or negligence in researching them beforehand rather than having a court intervene on their behalf after-the-fact and invalidate an otherwise validly formed contract based on such mistakes alone.