Also known as: market quotations · market quote · quoted market price
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A compilation of current trading prices for securities or commodities that the public or persons in a particular occupation generally rely on.
Prairie Grain Corp. sued Valley Foods Inc. for breach of a corn supply contract. To prove market price on the alleged breach date, Prairie offered a printout of that day's published corn futures prices from a nationwide commodities exchange that traders regularly consult. The court admitted the printout over a hearsay objection because the exchange prices qualified as a generally relied-on compilation.
In a cash-out merger, the acquiring company hired an investment bank to opine on the price for minority shares. The bank based its $42-per-share recommendation on market quotations for the target bank's stock together with unverified information supplied by the acquirer. Minority shareholders later challenged the fairness of the price derived from those quotations.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
A shareholder received a stock dividend and argued it constituted taxable income. The government pointed to market quotations showing the post-dividend price of her entire holdings remained essentially unchanged. The Court treated those quotations as evidence of value but ultimately held that market prices alone did not determine whether the dividend was income.
A published price list or compilation qualifies when it is generally relied on by the public or by persons in a particular occupation. Courts admit the document for the truth of the prices it reports once that foundational showing is made, without requiring testimony from the preparer.
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A guide loses the exception if industry participants treat its figures merely as artificial starting points rather than reliable indicators of market value. Internal acknowledgments that listed prices are routinely inflated and a publisher's own disclaimer can defeat the required showing of general reliance.
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The contract remains enforceable. The law supplies a reasonable market price at the time of delivery rather than treating the agreement as terminated, provided the parties intended to be bound despite failure of the designated pricing service.
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…additional shares did not substantially change the market value of her entire holdings. This tends to show that in this instance market quotations reflected intrinsic values — a thing they do not always do. But we regard the market prices of the securities as an unsafe criterion in an inquiry such as the present, when the question…