Pennington v. Wasson’s Empirical Analysis
1944
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently February 1991
17 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 Gustafson v. Bowling · Kininmonth v. Carson · Menke v. Duwe · Brown v. Webster · Frontier Lodge No. 104 v. Wilson
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘The general rule is, that if two persons execute wills at the same time, either by one or two instruments, making reciprocal dispositions in favor of each other, the mere execution of such wills does not impose such a legal obligation as will prevent revocation, (a) Agreements to make wills are not established merely because two persons simultaneously make reciprocal testamentary dispositions in favor of each other, when the language of such wills contains nothing to the effect that the instruments are the result of a contract.’ (Syl. |2.)” (pp. 500, 501.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““The separate wills of two persons which are reciprocal in their provisions giving the property of each to the other are not inherently contractual, where the wills do not so declare, and where there is no evidence of an agreement by the testators to that effect.””
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.