Doolittle v. Davenport’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 14 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““There was other evidence, some of which is hereinbefore referred to, tending to show that the appellant, and not Doolittle, was the moving party in having the will made. Indeed it is highly probable that if the deceased had not been ‘roused and spoken to,’ and the making of the will pressed upon him, it never would have been made. The fact is significant — outside of the question of undue influence, which is not raised here — for, if the purpose of making the will had originated with the deceased, and he had, of his own motion, carried that purpose into effect, those facts would have been important evidence to the point that notwithstanding his feeble and dying condition he still had the will power and the mental capacity to make the will. But if he was merely the passive, half-conscious assenter to the dictation of another person, that fact would be consistent with and corroborative of the want of testamentary capacity found by the court.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Carleton v. Plummer