Perry v. Strawbridge’s Empirical Analysis
1908
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 94 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 101 later decisions — most recently August 2015 · most notably Slocum v. Metropolitan Life Insurance (1923), 7 Ill. 2d 106 - Bradley v. Fox (1955)
5 federal appellate · 94 state decisions — followed in 19 states
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 Rector Etc of Holy Trinity Church v. United States · United States v. Kirby · Lau Ow Bew v. United States · Hanger v. Abbott · People ex rel. Attorney General v. Utica Insurance
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 101 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"In fact, the pathway of judicial literature from the earliest period down to the present is literally strewn with cases which, like beacon lights, have guided the hand of justice in preventing unjust, unrighteous, absurd, unreasonable and abhorrent results from the use of general words and expressions in statutes. To cite and quote more would be but to become tedious. We have gone thus far on account of the newness of the particular question of this case. Under these authorities we should not, and will not, hold that `widower' as used in section 2938, supra, means one who has created a condition by murderous hands and heart. This case is without the statute. `Widower' as there used means one who has been reduced to that condition by the ordinary and usual vicissitudes of life, and not one who, by felonious act, has himself created that condition".”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“`To permit a person who commits a murder, or any person claiming under him, to benefit by his criminal act, would be contrary to public policy. And no devisee can take under the will of a testator whose death has been caused by the criminal and felonious act of the devisee himself. And, in applying this rule, no distinction can be made between a death caused by murder and one caused by manslaughter.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.