Mercer v. . Downs’s Empirical Analysis
1926
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently September 2017
12 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.
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““. . . Indeed the prevailing rule seems to be that if an estate is given by will to the survivors of a class to take effect on the death of the testator, the word ‘survivors’ means those living at the death of the testator; but if a particular estate is given and the remainder is given to the then survivors of a class, the word ‘survivors’ means those surviving at the termination of the particular estate. . . . It necessarily follows, therefore, that the remaindermen could not be ascertained with certainty until the termination of the life estate.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Kale v. Forrest
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.