Fulton v. Freeland’s Empirical Analysis
1909
Citation profile
21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 21 later decisions — most recently July 1957
21 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 Mowry v. Norman · Dickie v. Carter · Pierce v. Pierce · Kemper v. Trustees of Lane Seminary · McClure v. McClure
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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The domestic scandals of many years ago could have no legitimate tendency to prove any modern state of things, and could only serve to burden the case with irrelevant and discreditable details that might and evidently did prejudice the jury, but which had no tendency whatever to show influence in 1871. The law does not confine the power of making wills to persons of blameless character, nor does it disqualify all others from being legatees. And whatever may have been the relations of the testator and his second wife eighteen or nineteen years before his death, and whatever may have been the circumstances of their marriage, it cannot be permissible to draw inferences from them concerning a condition of things many years thereafter, which if existing at all could be proved without difficulty as an existing fact, and not a possible contingency.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“‘¿If there are any facts, however little evidential force they may possess, upon which the testator may in reason have based his belief, it will not be an insane delusion, though on a consideration of the facts themselves his belief may seem illogical and foundationless to the court; for a will, it is obvious, is not to be overturned merely because the testator has not reasoned correctly.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Everly v. Everly““There is no such thing as a delusion founded upon facts. It is a mental conception in the absence of facts. If the idea entertained has for a basis anything substantial it is not a delusion. There may be a misjudgment of facts, or there may be an accentuated opinion founded upon insufficient facts, but not a delusion, rising to the dignity of a mental aberration.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Diggins v. Diggins
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.