Williams v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1937
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently September 2000
12 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Clark v. United States · Standard Fire Insurance v. Smithhart · Matthews v. Hoagland · Cummings v. Commonwealth · Walker v. Abercrombie
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““is absolute as to communications made with an attorney as to past transactions and offenses, but it does not apply to future transactions when the client is contemplating the commission of a crime or the perpetration of a fraud. The purpose of it is to secure to litigants free communication with their attorneys upon all matters involved in litigation and any other legitimate matters concerning which legal advice is desired. It extends to all matters concerning litigation or business transactions, whether pertinent to the matter m which the attorney was employed or not. But information given to an attorney or statements made to him with the purpose in mind of violating the law or being assisted in the commission of a crime is not privileged, and an attorney may divulge information given or statements made with the intent and purpose of violating the law or perpetrating a fraud without in any manner violating the rule. Ott v. State, 87 Tex.Cr.R. 382 , 222 S.W. 261 .” Williams v. Williams, 108 S.W.2d 297 (Tex.Civ.App.—Amarillo, 1937, no writ history), at page 299.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Helton v. State““ * * * that an attorney at law shall not disclose a communication made to him by his client during the existence of that relationship, nor disclose any other fact which came to the knowledge of such attorney by reason of such relationship.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Cochran v. Cochran
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.