Pender v. McKee’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
2 district · 165 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 167 later decisions — most recently February 2025 · most notably Tucker v. Johnson (1982), In Interest of FH (1979)
2 district · 165 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 Armstrong v. Manzo · Purinton v. Jamrock · Emons v. DINELLI · State Ex Rel. Gore v. Chillingworth · Williams v. Edmondson
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 167 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(a) Consent to adoption is not required of: (2) a parent of a child in the custody of another, if the parent for a period of at least one (1) year has failed significantly without justifiable cause (i) to communicate with the child or (ii) to provide for the care and support of the child as required by law or judicial de-creet.]”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage““The question was whether the father has ‘failed significantly’ for a period of one year to support his child ‘without justifiable cause.’ ‘Failed significantly’ certainly does not mean ‘failed totally.’ It only means that failure to support must be significant, as contrasted with an insignificant failure. It denotes a failure that is meaningful or important. Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2d Ed.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“The parent must furnish the support and maintenance himself and the duty is a personal one, and he may not rely upon assurance that someone else is properly supporting and maintaining the child to avoid the impact of the statute's providing for adoption of his child without his consent because of his failure to support the child.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Brown v. Johnson · Vick v. Cecil
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.