166 W. Va. 772 - Bennett v. Dove’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
39 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions — most recently February 2018 · most notably 196 W. Va. 97 - Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge No. 69 v. City of Fairmont (1996), 203 W. Va. 690 - State Ex Rel. Clark v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of West Virginia, Inc. (1998)
39 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 147 W. Va. 484 - Cotiga Development Co. v. United Fuel Gas Co. · Draper v. Gochman · 143 W. Va. 114 - State Ex Rel. Roberts v. Tucker · Williams v. South Penn Oil Co. · 143 W. Va. 122 - Magnus v. Halltown Paper Board Company
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“‘“It is not the right or province of a court to alter, pervert or destroy the clear meaning and intent of .the parties as expressed in unambiguous language in their written contract or to make a new or different contract for them.’ Cotiga Development Co. v. United Fuel Gas Co., 147 W.Va. 484 , 128 S.E.2d 626 (1962), Syllabus Point 3.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“'[a] valid written instrument which expresses the intent of the parties in plain and unambiguous language is not subject to judicial construction or interpretation but will be applied and enforced according to such intent.' Cotiga Development Co. v. United Fuel Gas Co. , 147 W.Va. 484 , 128 S.E.2d 626 (1962), Syllabus Point 1.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage““The parties used the words ‘desires to sell’ to express their intent. ‘Sell’ is commonly and ordinarily understood to mean an act of giving up property for money that the buyer either pays or promises to pay in the future, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (P.B. Gove Ed., 1976), and we must conclude that Robert Dove did not sell the property when he gave it to two of his children. “Accordingly, we conclude that the conveyance, a gift, did not violate Mabel Bennett’s preemptive right. Her right did not ripen because Robert Dove never attempted or desired to sell his property.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.