Bearbower v. Merry’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently June 2014
20 state decisions — followed in 11 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 Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia · Reynolds v. States · Zablocki v. Redhail · Meyer v. Nottger · Moulin v. Monteleone
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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Still another [reason for abolishing the suit] is the peculiar light which the whole proceeding throws on the nature of marriage, leaving one with the conviction that the successful plaintiff has engaged in something which looks very much like a sale of his wife’s affections. Most significantly of all, the action for alienation is based on psychological assumptions that are contrary to fact.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“a fundamental flaw in the criminal conversation remedy ... is its insensitive imposition without regard to the viability of the marriage relationship, or to the fact ... that relationship may not have been affected adversely. In short, recovery may be it allowed where stability of the marriage survives unimpaired.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“unreasonable to impose upon a defendant such harsh results without affording any real opportunity to interject logically valid defenses... .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.