Middlebrook v. Perkins’s Empirical Analysis
1943
Citation profile
123 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 127 later decisions — most recently May 1998 · most notably 15 Cal. 3d 838 - In Re Marriage of Brown (1976), Randall v. Department of Institutions (1946)
123 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 4 Cal. 2d 711 - Spier v. Lang · Estate of Watts · Estate of Rattray · Estate of Stanford · In Re Estate of Brady
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 127 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“looking to the interests of the parties to litigation as of primary importance, [this court] has very liberally construed such a notice as one in which the designation of administratrix may be considered as des-criptio personae.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“By these sections [Probate Code, 228 and 229], the court has said, the Legislature intended that a lineal descendant of the predeceased spouse should succeed to all property of the surviving spouse in which the predeceased spouse owned an interest; if there were no lineal descendants of either spouse, the property should then be divided equally between the respective families of the two spouses by whose efforts it was accumulated. If, however, the property had originally come to the predeceased spouse by other means that his efforts during the existence of the marriage, such an acquisition before marriage, or by gift, devise, or bequest subsequent to the marriage, then the Legislature intended that such property should descend, upon the death of the survivor, entirely to the family of the predeceased spouse.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“If the decedent leaves neither spouse nor issue, and the estate, or any portion thereof was community property of the decedent and a previously deceased spouse, and belonged or went to the decedent by virtue of its community character on the death of such spouse, or came to the decedent from said spouse by gift ..., then one-half of such community property goes to the parents of the decedent in equal shares, or if either is dead to the survivor ..., and the other half goes to the parents of the deceased spouse in equal shares, or if either is dead to the survivor. ...”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Estate of Reizian
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.