Pilcher v. Pilcher’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

19 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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[I]n Goods of Blewett (1880), 5 Law Rep. Prob. Div., p. 116, the court said: “The only question, then, is whether the signature and subscription by initials only are sufficient. A mark is sufficient, though the testator can write (Baker v. Dening, 8 Ad. & E. 94). Initials, if intended to represent the name, must be equally good. The language of the Lord Chancellor in Hindermarsh v. Charlton 8 H.L.C. 160, at p. 167, seems equally applicable to the testator’s signature as to the witnesses’ subscription: T will lay down this as my notion of the law that to make a valid subscription of a witness there must either be the name or some mark which is intended to represent the name;’ and Lord Chelmsford says: ‘The subscription must mean such a signature as is descriptive of the witness, whether by mark or by initials, or by writing the name in full’.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Pierce v. Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention

2. “[W]hat constitutes a signature must largely depend upon the circumstances of each particular case.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Irving v. Divito