172 Cal. App. 4th 67 - Chang v. Lederman’s Empirical Analysis
2009
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently June 2023 · most notably 207 Cal. App. 4th 141 - Thayer v. Kabateck Brown Kellner LLP (2012), Graham-Sult v. Clainos (2013)
4 federal appellate · 18 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 50 Cal. 3d 205 - Silberg v. Anderson · 56 Cal. 2d 583 - Lucas v. Hamm · 2 Cal. 4th 962 - Aubry v. Tri-City Hospital District · 49 Cal. 2d 647 - Biakanja v. Irving · 18 Cal. 3d 335 - Goodman v. Kennedy
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[When ... the testamentary intent has been implemented, no good reason exists why the attorney should be held accountable for using certain words suggested or selected by the testator which later prove to be ambiguous. In addition, the task of proving whether claimed ambiguity was the result of negligence of the drafting attorney or whether it was the deliberate choice of the testator, would impose an insurmountable burden on the parties, since in such a case the trier of fact would be required to decide this crucial issue without the benefit of the testimony of the most important witness, the testa[tior himself. Once recognized, such a duty would apply by parity of reasoning not only to wills, but also to contracts, conveyances and other legal instruments. The duty thus created would amount to a requirement to draft litigation-proof l[elgal doeu-ments. - This unlimited liability ... would result in a speculative and almost intolerable burden on the legal profession indeed.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The Osornio court emphasized this difference between the failed bequest in the case before it and the frustration of the potential beneficiary’s expectations in Radovich-. “In that instance, there was no plain expression of the testator’s intention to benefit the plaintiff .... In contrast, here we have a clear expression of [the testator’s] intention that Osornio be her sole beneficiary under the signed 2001 Will.” (Osornio, supra, 124 Cal.App.4th at p. 336 .) That is, to hold an attorney owed a duty of care not only to his or her testator client but also to an intended beneficiary, the testator’s intent must be “expressed and formalized in [a] signed will.” (Ibid.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Parks v. Fink“a lawyer who is persuaded of his client's intent to dispose of her property in a certain manner, and who drafts the will accordingly, fulfills his duty of loyalty to his client and is not required to urge the testator to consider an alternative plan in order to forestall a claim by someone thereby excluded from the will ....”
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.