Morehead v. Goellert’s Empirical Analysis
1945
Citation profile
6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently October 2014
6 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 Gardner v. Anderson · Coleman v. Shoemaker · Alexander v. Goellert · Woodley v. Howse · Allen v. Pedder
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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““. . . whenever it appears in the instrument creating the estate that it was intended that the issue of the first taker should take by inheritance in a direct line, and in a regular order and course of descent, so long as his posterity should endure, and an estate in fee or in tail is given in remainder, upon an indefinite failure of issue, then the estate first created will be construed to be an estate tail. If, on the other hand, the limitation over is not postponed until an indefinite failure of issue, but is to take effect on failure of children only or on failure of issue within a given time, upon what is known as a ‘definite failure of issue/ it is well settled that the estate will not belong to the class known as ‘estates tail/ ””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is a well-recognized rule that if the devise provides for a gift over to take effect upon failure of issue, such contingency must be upon ‘indefinite failure’ of issue rather than upon a ‘definite failure’ of issue if an estate tail is to vest in the devisee. That is to say, the failure of issue upon which the gift or limitation over is to vest must be one which may occur at some indefinite time in the future. If the devise indicates a fixed time when the estate in the first taker is to terminate because of failure of issue, then no fee tail estate is created by the devise (31 C. J. S. 35; 10 R. C. L. 659; 19 Am. Jur. 515 ; Burnworth v. Fellerman, 131 Kan. 186 , 289 Pac. 433). But what are the words or provisions which import a definite or an indefinite failure of issue? That is the question which immediately confronts us here.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Ballance v. Garner
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.