Butt v. Murden’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

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

1. “So that there being no living persons who had any direct and substantial interest under the will and no persons except the executor who were charged with any duty whatever as to it. The will was peculiar and doubtless unwise, but this did not relieve the executors of their responsibility, or of their duty to represent the testator, charged as they were by the will with carrying his purposes into effect in so far as it might be legally possible to do so. It could not have been certainly foretold either by expert or layman until the decision of this court in the original case whether the will was valid or invalid. Numerous witnesses testified in the original case that the testator was perfectly capable of making a will at the time of its execution in 1918. It was drawn by a reputable attorney of unquestioned integrity, witnessed by this attorney and another member of the Portsmouth bar of outstanding ability and character, both of whom testified that in their opinion the testator had testamentary capacity at the time of the execution of the will. Unless these executors had defended that contest, it would have gone by default, for there was no one else to incur the expense of doing so.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In re Estate of Wicker