Kinney v. Gardella’s Empirical Analysis
1940
Citation profile
38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 38 later decisions — most recently December 2016 · most notably 118 Cal. App. 2d 300 - Estate of Moody (1953), 30 Cal. 3d 880 - Estate of Black (1982)
38 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 Estate of Manchester · Estate of Bernard · In Re the Estate of McMahon · Shoults v. Williams · 21 Tex. Civ. App. 361 - Lawson, Guardian v. Estate of Dawson
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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is for the probate court in the first instance to say whether the document was 'signed' by the decedent, and its determination will not be disturbed unless it is without support in the evidence,”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“.... From the earliest consideration of the question, completeness of the testamentary declaration has been deemed sufficient evidence of the”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““The true rule, as we conceive it to be, is that, where-ever placed, the fact that it was intended as an executing signature must satisfactorily appear on the face of the document itself. If it is at the end of the document, the universal custom of mankind forces the conclusion that it was appended as an execution, if nothing to the contrary appears. If placed elsewhere, it is for the court to say, from an inspection of the whole document, its language as well as its form, and the relative position of its parts, whether or not there is a positive and satisfactory inference from the document itself that the signature was so placed with the intent that it should there serve as a token of execution. If such inference thus appears, the execution may be considered as proven by such signature.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Smith v. MacDonald
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.