Bonsall's Estate’s Empirical Analysis
1926
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently October 1982 · most notably 175 Pa. Super. 100 - Commonwealth v. Shaffer (1954), 222 Pa. Super. 296 - Commonwealth v. Simpson (1972)
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 27 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 Greenleaf v. Goodrich · State ex rel. Sigsbee v. City of Birmingham · William Robinson Jun v. William Noble's Administrators · Frankel v. German Tyrolean Alps Co. · McLean v. Moran
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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The statute, dropping unnecessary words, provides, ‘Hereafter when, ... by the provisions of any . . . will, . . . property . . . shall be . . . devised . . . in trust, for the use ... of any person . . . for life, . . . and which shall provide therein that upon, the termination of the estate . . . for life, . . . the remainder over shall vest in the . . . testator’s heirs or next of kin or the persons thereunto entitled under the intestate laws, or other similar or equivalent phrase, the same shall be construed as meaning the person or persons thereunto entitled at the time of the termination of the estate . . . for life . . . under the intestate laws ... as they shall exist at the time of such termination; and such phrases shall not be construed as meaning the person or persons who were the heirs or next of kin ... at the time the testator died’; with a proviso against a construction preventing a testator from expressly or by necessary implication directing otherwise.” Bonsall’s Est., 288 Pa. 39, pp. 40, 41 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Sanders v. Lowe““It may be very safely concluded that the legislature could not foresee every possible wording which a testator might use to define classes of persons to take in remainder (such as ‘issue,’ ‘children,’ ‘grandchildren,’ ‘descendants’ and the like) and determined to cover them all by the expression ‘similar or equivalent phrase.’ ” (emphasis added).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““. . .We think this will carry out the real purpose and intent of testators in almost every instance, and, as it does in this case, will keep the title of property in the hands of those of testator’s own blood.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Landis v. Bryer
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.