Armstrong v. Merts’s Empirical Analysis
1947
Citation profile
30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently October 2000 · most notably Trammell v. Elliott (1973), McDonald v. Suarez (1956)
30 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 Sumpter v. Carter · Watts v. Finley · Cook v. Weaver · Trustees of the University of Georgia v. Denmark · Comer v. Citizens & Southern National Bank
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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The natural and reasonable presumption is that when so solemn and important an instrument as a will is executed, the testator intends to dispose of his whole estate, and does not intend to die intestate as to any part of his property, which presumption is overcome only where the intention of the testator to do otherwise is plain and unambiguous, or is necessarily implied.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Harper v. Fuller
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.