Delafield v. . Parish’s Empirical Analysis
1862
Citation profile
154 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 155 later decisions — most recently February 1998 · most notably Slaughter v. Heath (1907), McMechen v. McMechen (1881)
154 state decisions — followed in 26 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 155 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is essential that the testator has sufficient capacity to comprehend perfectly the condition of his property, his relation to the persons who were or should or might have been the objects of his bounty, and the scope and bearing of the .provisions of his will. He must, in the language of the cases, have sufficient active memory to collect in his mind, without prompting, the particulars or elements of the business to be transacted, and to hold them in his mind a sufficient length of time to perceive at least their obvious relations to each other, and be able to form some rational judgment in relation to them. A testator who has sufficient mental power to do these things is, within the meaning and intent of the statute of wills, a person of sound mind and memory, and is competent to dispose of his estate by will.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““If a dominion is acquired by any person over a mind of sufficient sanity for general purposes, and of sufficient soundness and discretion to regulate his affairs in general, yet, if such dominion or influence were acquired over him as to prevent the exercise of such discretion, it would be equally inconsistent with the idea of the disposing mind.” Delafield v. Parish, 25 N. Y. 23 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““At common law and under our statutes the legal presumption is that every man is compos mentis, and the burden of proof that he is non compos mentis rests- on the party who alleges that an unnatural condition of mind existed in the testator. He who sets up the fact that the testator was non compos mentis must prove it.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. In re Gedney's Wild
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.