2000 Pa. Super. 224 - Watters v. Watters’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 state decisions

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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The scope of review of an appellate court reviewing a child custody order is of the broadest type; the appellate court is not bound by the deductions or inferences made by the trial court from its findings of fact, nor must the reviewing court accept a finding that has no competent evidence to support it. Watters v. Watters, 757 A.2d 966, 967 (Pa.Super.2000). However, this broad scope of review does not vest in the reviewing court the duty or the privilege of making its own independent determination. Id. Thus, an appellate court is empowered to determine whether the trial court’s incontrovertible factual findings support its factual conclusions, but it may not interfere with those conclusions unless they are unreasonable in view of the trial court’s factual findings; and thus represent a gross abuse of discretion. Id.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2004 Pa. Super. 357 - Jackson v. Beck