137 W. Va. 27 - Nelson v. Ratliffe’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently July 1994
8 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 126 W. Va. 568 - Nelson v. Nash · 71 W. Va. 303 - Freeman v. Freeman · 134 W. Va. 653 - Powell v. Sayres · Coffman v. Hedrick · Dower v. Seeds
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““If a testator obliterates, deletes, or cancels a will, having a present intent to make a new will as a substitute for the old, and the new will is not made, it is presumed that the testator preferred the old will to an intestacy and the first will will be given effect.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““No will or codicil, or any part thereof, shall be revoked, unless ... by the testator, or some person in his presence and by his direction, cutting, tearing, burning, obliterating, canceling or destroying the same, or the signature thereto, with the intent to revoke.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“'fails of effect for some reason, it will be presumed that the testator preferred the old will to an intestacy, and this testament will be given effect.’”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Miller v. Todd
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.