Harper v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis
1961
Citation profile
28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently May 2013 · most notably Baumler v. Hazelwood (1961), Germann v. Matriss (1970)
28 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 Holland v. Nimitz · Holland v. Nimitz · Ragsdale v. Ragsdale · Martin v. McAdams · Shaneybrook v. Blizzard
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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Upon a reexamination of the purpose of the Dead Man’s Statute, in light of all our past decisions and those from other jurisdictions and with regard to the probable legislative intent, we are unable to follow the precedent established in Kuhn and Freeman that the statute was intended to include the mere unilateral observations and opinions of a survivor of a deceased. The rule of strict construction does not permit such an extension of the Dead Man’s Statute by this Court. As we construe the statute, the circuit court committed error by barring the testimony of the plaintiff as to her mental or physical observations and descriptions of the deceased which antedated and post-dated the execution of the will.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““With this situation in mind, we will give the greatest import to the fact that the Dead Man’s Statute has the effect of limiting the evidence in a judicial hearing to something less than all the available evidence. Justice will not ordinarily prevail where only a part of the available evidence affords the only support for the judgment rendered.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Grant v. Griffin““To hold that the term 'transaction’ includes such an event as an automobile collision is to disregard the customary, common and ordinary meaning of the word, and we believe that such a holding would be a judicial extension of this exclusionary rule far beyond what the Legislature intended.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Grant v. Griffin
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.