184 W. Va. 649 - McClure v. McClure’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
25 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 29 later decisions — most recently June 2014 · most notably 185 W. Va. 400 - Arnold v. Turek (1991), Lunsford v. Western States Life Insurance (1995)
25 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 161 W. Va. 603 - John W. Lodge Distributing Co. v. Texaco, Inc. · 177 W. Va. 592 - Price v. Halstead · Lee v. Comer · Vaughn's Adm'r v. Louisville N. R. Co., Etc. · 178 W. Va. 104 - State v. Smith
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.
“Under W.Va.Code, 55-7-6 (1985), our wrongful death statute, the personal representative has a fiduciary obligation to the beneficiaries of the deceased because the personal representative is merely a nominal party and any recovery passes to the beneficiaries designated in the wrongful death statute and not to the decedent's estate.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“1. Unlawful intentional causation of the death of an insured by the beneficiary named in the insurance policy, whether felonious or not, is the test of the common law rule barring the beneficiary from the proceeds of the policy. 3. Code 1931, 42-4-2, makes conviction of a felony conclusive against a beneficiary who kills the insured, but does not otherwise change the common law rule. .”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“No person who has been convicted of feloniously killing another, or of conspiracy in the killing of another, shall take or acquire any money or property, real or personal, or interest therein, from the one killed or conspired against, either by descent and distribution, or by will, or by any policy or certificate of insurance, or otherwise; but the money or the property to which the person so convicted would otherwise have been entitled shall go to the person or persons who would have taken the same if the person so convicted had been dead at the date of the death of the one killed or conspired against, unless by some rule of law or equity the money ra-the property would pass to some other-person or persons, [emphasis added].”
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.