Hoffecker v. Hoffecker’s Empirical Analysis
1958
Citation profile
39 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 39 later decisions — most recently June 1998 · most notably 2 Va. App. 238 - Dodge v. Dodge (1986), First National Bank of Martinsville v. Cobler (1975)
39 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 Raiford v. Raiford · Gilmer v. Brown · Ringgold v. Ringgold · Leckie v. Lynchburg Trust & Savings Bank · Butler v. 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 39 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““When a cause is referred to a commissioner in chancery, the chancellor does not delegate his judicial function to him. He is appointed for the purpose of assisting the chancellor and not to supplant or replace him. It is the duty of the chancellor to weigh the evidence according to correct principles of law and arrive at his own conclusions.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Smoot v. Smoot · Cooper v. Cooper“The law does not permit courts to sever marriage bonds and to break up households merely because husband and wife, through unruly tempers, lack of patience and uncongenial natures, live unhappily together. It requires them to submit to the ordinary consequences of human infirmities and unwise selections, and the misconduct which will form a good ground for legal separation must be very serious and such as amounts to extreme cruelty, entirely subversive of the family relations, rendering the association intolerable.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Weight to be given commissioner’s report. - The report of a commissioner in chancery shall not have the weight given to the verdict of a jury on conflicting evidence, but the court shall confirm or reject such report in whole or in part, according to the view which it entertains of the law and the evidence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Cooper v. Cooper
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.