Collier v. Lindley’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 district · 80 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 81 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The trend of modern authority has been toward the upholding of trusts which have for their object the creation of a more enlightened public opinion, with a consequent change in laws having to do with human relations and rights in a republic such as ours. ... To hold that a change in a law is in effect an attempt to violate that law would discourage improvement in legislation and tend to compel us to continue indefinitely to live under laws designed for an entirely different state of society. Such view is opposed to every principle of our government based on the theory that it is a government 'of the people, by the people and for the people,' and fails to recognize the right of those who make the laws to change them at their pleasure when circumstances seem to require. With the wisdom of the proposed change the courts are not concerned.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Estate of Robbins

2. ““The provision for the payment to him of the sum of $500 conditioned upon said trust or some portion thereof being invalid is nothing more nor less than a thinly veiled attempt to engage the attention and compel the labors of the several courts of record of this state in order to effectuate a judicial determination of the validity or invalidity of said trust at once and in advance of any real contest or controversy between the parties in interest. . . . We hold it to be in plain 'violation of the spirit and intent ... of the general principle that courts should only be employed in the adjudi cation of actual as distinguished from moot questions and controversies when these are brought before them in the regular and orderly course of litigation by those parties only who are directly interested in their adjudication.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 122 Cal. App. 640 - Gillette v. Gillette

3. “The enforcement of charitable uses cannot be limited to any narrow and stated formula. As has been well said, it must expand with the advancement of civilization and the daily increasing needs of men. New discoveries in science, new fields and opportunities for human action, the differing condition, character, and wants of communities and nations, change and enlarge the scope of charity, and where new necessities are created new charitable uses must be established. The underlying principle is the same; its application is as varying as the wants of humanity.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 168 Cal. App. 2d 25 - Estate of Peck