132 W. Va. 747 - Bell v. Eicholtz’s Empirical Analysis
1949
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently June 1972 · most notably 145 W. Va. 685 - Whiteman v. Robinson (1960), 144 W. Va. 419 - State Ex Rel. Harmon v. Utterback (1959)
24 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 131 W. Va. 302 - State Ex Rel. Lipscomb v. Joplin · Green v. Campbell · 129 W. Va. 765 - Pukas v. Pukas · Cunningham v. Barnes
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When a parent has transferred to another the custody of his infant child by fair agreement which has been acted on by such other person, to the manifest interest and welfare of the child, the parent will not be permitted to reclaim the custody of the child, unless he can show that a change of custody will materially promote his child's welfare, moral or physical.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“In a contest involving the custody of an infant the welfare of the child is the polar star by which the discretion of the court will be guided.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Stout v. Massie
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.