Smith v. Thompson’s Empirical Analysis
1930
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently June 1979
13 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 Seaver v. . Ransom · Carmichael v. Carmichael · Crawford v. Edwards · Doyle v. Fischer · Bird v. Pope
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Where an agreement is entered into by two persons, and especially by husband and wife, to make mutual and reciprocal wills disposing of their separate estates pursuant to their mutual agreement, and where mutual and reciprocal wills are made in accordance with that agreement, and where, after the death of one of the agreeing parties, the other takes under the will and accepts the benefits of said agreement, equity will enforce specific performance of said oral agreement and prevent the perpetration of fraud which would result from a breach of the agreement on the part of the one accepting the benefits thereof.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Kuhn v. Kuhn““It has been repeatedly held by this court that in a suit in equity a person for whose benefit a promise is made may enforce it in his own name. ’ ’'”
1 later decision 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.