Sherrick v. Butler’s Empirical Analysis
1936
Citation profile
29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 29 later decisions — most recently May 1998 · most notably In Re Hight's Guardianship (1944), In the Matter of the Guardianship of M.R.S. (1998)
29 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 Jamison v. Gilbert Et Ux. · Breckenridge v. Breckenridge · Zink v. Milner · In Re Cross (Butler)
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 29 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In a contest between the father and the grandparents, in order to deprive the father of the custody of his child, it must be shown that his condition in life, or his character and habits, are such that provision for the child’s ordinary comfort and contentment or for its intellectual and moral development cannot be reasonably expected at the parent’s hands.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Ex Parte Parker““The unfitness which will deprive a parent of the right to the custody of his minor child must be positive and not comparative; and the mere fact that his minor child might be better cared for by a third person is not sufficient to deprive the parent of his right to its custody.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. House v. House
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.