Barnard v. Barnard’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
10 federal appellate · 22 district · 280 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 329 later decisions — most recently February 2025 · most notably Tomlinson v. Board of Education (1993), Mulligan v. Rioux (1994)
10 federal appellate · 22 district · 280 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 Sturman v. Socha · Kenworthy v. Kenworthy · Collins v. Sears, Roebuck & Co. · Lar-Rob Bus Corp. v. Town of Fairfield · O'Neil v. Interstate Navigation Co.
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 329 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A contract is to be construed as a whole and all relevant provisions will be considered together.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage“A court will not torture words to import ambiguity where the ordinary meaning leaves no room for ambiguity and words do not become ambiguous simply because lawyers or laymen contend for different meanings.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage“In interpreting contract items, we have repeatedly stated that the intent of the parties is to be ascertained by a fair and reasonable construction of the written words and that the language used must be accorded its common, natural, and ordinary meaning and usage where it can be sensibly applied to the subject matter of the contract.”
11 later decisions 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.