132 W. Va. 373 - Hereford v. Meek’s Empirical Analysis
1949
Citation profile
128 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 130 later decisions — most recently June 2016 · most notably 135 W. Va. 877 - State v. Epperly (1951), State v. General Daniel Morgan Post No. 548 (1959)
128 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 123 W. Va. 637 - Miners in General Group v. Hix · Mulvey v. City of Boston · Slack v. Jacob · 64 W. Va. 659 - State v. Snyder · 128 W. Va. 456 - State Ex Rel. McLaughlin v. Morris
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 130 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A statute is open to construction only where the language used requires interpretation because of ambiguity which renders it susceptible of two or more constructions or of such doubtful or obscure meaning that reasonable minds might be uncertain or disagree as to its meaning.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“* * * applies only to an action based upon a right of action which accrues by reason of an injury done to the person of another, when the injury does not cause the death of the injured person and when, after the injury is inflicted, the wrongdoer dies, and which right of action, by virtue of the statute, survives the death of the wrongdoer and may be enforced against his personal representative; and that the holding in these cases is limited to a situation expressly covered by Section 8, as amended, and to an action based upon the right of action dealt with by its provisions. It should not be considered as applicable to or controlling of actions for personal injuries generally when the death of the wrongdoer does not occur or to any other type of personal action which does not clearly come within the express provisions of the statute, as amended by Chapter 2, Acts of the Legislature, 1945 * * *”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Though the Legislature, in enacting ... [an] amendment may not have realized or foreseen the result of its action ..., it is presumed to be familiar with “all existing law” ... applicable to the subject matter _If its exercise of ... power cause[s] an undesirable result, the remedy lies with the Legislature, whose action has produced it, and not the courts. The question of dealing with the situation in a more satisfactory or desirable manner is a matter of policy which calls for legislative, not judicial, action.”
2 later decisions 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.