Ryan v. Andrews’s Empirical Analysis
1870
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently June 1924
17 state decisions — followed in 10 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.
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We think, therefore, that under the statute the estate can under this section never go to any one else but the nearest of kin, according to the degrees of the civil law. If there is but a single next relative, he or she will take the whole estate, without reference to whether the kindred is on the side of the one parent or the other. If there are several next of kin, and they are not all related on the same side, then only such of them will take as are of the blood of the ancestor from whom the estate was derived. In the present case, as there is no one else of the same degree of kindred with the maternal grandmother, and she is nearest of kin, the estate devolved solely upon her, and the remoter kindred are excluded.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Lyon v. Crego“The obvious and natural connection of the various provisions would confine the operation of the rule of exclusion to those cases where there is more than one person in the same degree of kinship, and where they are not all relatives of the blood of the ancestor from whom the estate is derived. This construction gives the property in all cases to the nearest kindred, but excludes such as are not of a particular stock. It avoids the incongruity of passing over near kindred for those who are remote, and satisfies all the words of the section, while it prevents very serious mischiefs.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Estate of Belshaw“it would follow that in the absence of paternal kindred the estate would escheat in preference to passing to near kindred on the maternal side, which is also a result not to be needlessly attributed to the legislative intent.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Estate of Belshaw
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.