Crane v. Trent’s Empirical Analysis
1944
Citation profile
14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently July 2003
14 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 In Re the Probate of the Last Will & Testament of Andrews · Churchill's Estate · Caeman v. Van Harke · Hill v. Kennedy · First National Bank v. Cottingim
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.
““Every will, except an oral will as provided in section 44 [59-608], shall be in writing, and signed at the end thereof by the party making the same, or by some other person in his presence and by his express direction, and shall be attested and subscribed in the presence of such party by two or more competent witnesses, who saw the testator subscribe or heard him acknowledge the same.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“. . We prefer this strict construction of the statute to one which would tend to break down the formalities with which our legislature has seen fit to cloak the passing of property by devise. . . . The witnessing of a will is just as essential as writing and signing at the end. It is a solemn ceremony, involving the assembling of qualified persons who must perform prescribed acts under prescribed conditions, . . . It is undoubtedly true that from time to time an honest attempt to execute a last will and testament is defeated by failure to observe some one or more of the statutory requirements. It is better this should happen under a proper construction of the statute, than that the individual case should be permitted to weaken those provisions calculated to protect testators generally from fraudulent alterations of their wills.””
3 later decisions 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.