Patterson v. Polk’s Empirical Analysis
1958
Citation profile
6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently October 2019
6 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 Union Trust Company v. Madigan · Wallace v. Wallace · Cross v. Manning · Wooldridge v. Gilman · Cockrill v. Armstrong
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The distinction between mandatory and precatory words in wills and trust instruments could make a treatise in itself. In wills and trust instruments, directions are held to be mandatory when such words direct, command, or require something to be done; and directions are held to be precatory when such words merely express a hope or wish, and leave it to the trustee or the occurrence of some fortuitous circumstance as to whether the desires will be accomplished.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. McClure v. McClure
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.