113 N.C. App. 32 - Surles v. Surles’s Empirical Analysis
1993
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently October 2016
16 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 10 N.C. App. 545 - In Re Custody of Stancil · 52 N.C. App. 203 - Falls v. Falls · 36 N.C. App. 601 - Steele v. Steele · Smith v. AMERICAN RADIATOR & STANDARD SANITARY CORPORATION · Combs v. Peters
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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[The trial court] has the opportunity to see the parties in person and to hear the witnesses, and [its] decision ought not be upset on appeal absent a clear showing of abuse of discretion.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[The trial court] can detect tenors, tones, and flavors that are lost in the bare printed record read months later by appellate judges.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“The trial court’s entire objective in [custody] cases is to determine the best environment for the child or children. . . . [T]hese decisions are often difficult, but even where parents love their children, “a parent’s love must yield to another, if, after judicial investigation, it is found that the best interest of the child is subserved thereby.” Of necessity in these cases, the trial court is vested with wide discretion. “[The trial court] has the opportunity to see the parties in person and to hear the witnesses, and [its] decision ought not be upset on appeal absent a clear showing of abuse of discretion.” “[The trial court] can detect tenors, tones, and flavors that are lost in the bare printed record read months later by appellate judges.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.