Barnewall v. Murrell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

89 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 89 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ * * * Instead of indulging suspicion or conjecture to destroy the validity of wills, the courts are bound to support them against mere suspicion or conjecture, — bound to support them when any theory or hypothesis maintaining them is as probable as that which is suggested to defeat them.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Ray v. McClelland · 251 So. 3d 34 - Pickens v. Estate of Fenn

2. ““It is undoubted law that any deficiency in the evidence of subscribing witnesses as to the due execution or identity..of the instrument may be supplied by the evidence of other witnesses. If this was not true, the validity of wills would often depend, not upon the existence of facts rendering them valid, but upon the retentiveness of the memory of the subscribing witnesses. Hall v. Hall, 38 Ala. 131 . As was said in this case: ‘The law makes two subscribing witnesses indispensable to the formal execution of a will; but it by no means follows that the testimony of these witnesses is the only evidence by which the due execution of the will can be established. On the contrary, it is laid down as undoubted law that if, from forgetfulness, the subscribing witnesses should fail to prove the formal execution of the will, other evidence is admissible to supply the deficiency; or, if the subscribing witnesses all swear that the will was not duly executed they may be contradicted, and the will supported by other witnesses or by circumstances. See, also, Dewey v. Dewey, 1 Metc. 349 .’ The statute does not require that a testator should inform the subscribing witnesses that the instrument they are subscribing is his will, or give them any information of its contents. 1 Jarman on Wills, 80; 2 Green. Ev. 675; Leverett v. Carlisle, 19 Ala. 80 ; Garrett v. Heflin, 98 Ala. 617 .””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Massey v. Reynolds

3. ““If any theory consistent with- the validity-of the will can be suggested, which appears to the court [or jury trying the issue] to be as probable as the theory, on which the argument for the invalidity is based, the will as found must be maintained.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Stuck v. Howard