Stephenson v. Wilson’s Empirical Analysis
1938
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently October 1988
2 federal appellate · 12 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 Williams v. Ellington · State v. Pyle · Smith v. Nyburg · Clark v. Linley Motor Co. · Wilson v. Stephenson
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In Hansen v. First Nat. Bank of Dunlap, 197 Ia. 1101 , 198 N.W. 505 , the action was to quiet the title to certain real estate held by plaintiff by a deed from her husband on the same date on which an execution had been issued to subject the property to satisfy a judgment in favor of the defendant bank. Plaintiff prevailed in the court below, but the supreme court reversed the judgment, saying— “ ‘Although the mere relationship between the parties to a contract does not per se constitute a badge of fraud, courts sense the obligation to scrutinize closely transactions between relatives when a creditor’s interests are involved. Therefore, in dealing with this class of testimony, we necessarily, and perhaps unconsciously, give weight to it in the light of experience and are influenced by the accordance of the evidence offered with facts within the realm of human conduct and experience. The circumstances surrounding the impeached transaction are mute witnesses in the case, and usually are vitally forceful and probatively cogent. We think in terms of their probability, and in the last analysis, the weight to be given the evidence rests, as Greenleaf said, “upon our faith in human testimony, as sanctioned by experience.” ’ (p. 1103.) “In a similar case, Barks v. Kleyne, 198 Ia. 793 , 200 N.W. 439 , the court said: “ ‘Although blood relationship is not per se a badge of fraud, it strengthens the inferences that arise from circumstances; and whenever this confidential relation exist”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.