Franklin v. McLean’s Empirical Analysis
1951
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently September 1994
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.
Relationships
Relies on LaRue v. Lee · Wilkes' Administrator v. Wilkes · Dickens v. Bonnewell · Thompson v. Royall
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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“As is pointed out in Thompson v. Royall, 163 Va. 492, 497 , 175 S.E. 748 : “*** revocation of a will by cancellation within the meaning of the statute, contemplates marks or lines across the written parts of the instrument, or a physical defacement, or some mutilation of the writing itself, with the intent to revoke. ***” “It is generally agreed that if a will produced for probate, which is shown to have been in the custody of the testator after its execution, was found among the testator’s effects after his death, in such a state of mutilation, obliteration, or cancellation as represents a sufficient act of revocation within the meaning of the applicable statute, it will be presumed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that such act was performed by the testator with the intention of revoking the instrument. *** Whatever presumption arises from acts of cancelation or mutilation is rebuttable, but the burden of the rebuttal rests upon the proponent.” 57 Am. Jur., Wills, § 550, pp. 378, 379.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Jessup v. Jessup
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.