Beck v. Downey’s Empirical Analysis
191 F.2d 150 · 1951
Citation profile
10 federal appellate · 1 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently February 2000
10 federal appellate · 1 district · 7 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 Love v. Wilcox · Smith v. Greenburg · West Coast Life Insurance v. Crawford · Downey v. People · 115 Cal. App. 646 - Meyer v. Johnson
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The words `if living' must be interpreted in their ordinary common sense meaning, namely, that the insured intended the proceeds to go to her mother-in-law, if the beneficiary was not alive but was `dead and buried'. Had there been an intent to have the proceeds go to the contingent beneficiary in the event of any incapacity of the beneficiary, while alive, to take the proceeds, plain language to that effect could and certainly would have been used. We think the language of the policies was clear and unequivocal.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“The contingency, which was a condition precedent to [the contingent beneficiary’s] right to the proceeds, was that [the primary beneficiary] be not ‘living’ at the time of the death of the insured. In the ordinary meaning of the word ‘living,’ the contingency conditioning [the contingent beneficiary’s] right to the fund never occurred.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“person sentenced to imprisonment in the State Prison for life is thereafter deemed civilly dead,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.