Lide v. Mears’s Empirical Analysis
1949
Citation profile
149 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 151 later decisions — most recently August 2025 · most notably Adams v. North Carolina Department of Natural & Economic Resources (1978), Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company v. Roberts (1964)
149 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.
Relationships
Relies on Town of Tryon v. Duke Power Co. · Poore v. . Poore · Anderson v. Brown · Carolina Power & Light Co. v. Iseley · Green v. . Casualty 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 151 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“There is much misunderstanding as to the object and scope of this legislation. Despite some notions to the contrary, it does not undertake to convert judicial tribunals into counsellors and impose upon them the duty of giving advisory opinions to any parties who may come into court and ask for either academic enlightenment or practical guidance concerning their legal affairs. [Citations omitted.] This observation may be stated in the vernacular in this wise: The Uniform Declaratory Judgment Act does not license litigants to fish in judicial ponds for legal advice.”
22 later decisions quote this exact passage““Courts of record within their respective jurisdictions shall have power to declare rights, status, and other legal relations, whether or not further relief is or could be claimed. No action or proceeding shall be open to objection on the ground that a declaratory judgment or decree is prayed for. The declaration may be either affirmative or negative in form and effect; and such declarations shall have the force and effect of a final judgment or decree.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“Candor compels the observation that the pleadings in the case at bar do not show the existence of a controversy between the parties as to the meaning of the will or as to their rights thereunder with the explicitness of allegation desirable in declaratory judgment actions. But when these pleadings are interpreted with extreme liberality, they do reveal by implication rather than by express averment that the plaintiffs and the defendants are in dispute as to whether the duties of Lawrence K. Mears as surviving trustee of the testamentary trust have ceased and as to the respective interests given to them by the will and codicil in the store property and the hotel property of the testator in Canton. In consequence, the court below was empowered to render a declaratory judgment covering these matters.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Coleman v. Edwards
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.