Heath v. Turner’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions — most recently May 2025 · most notably Spring Lakes, Ltd. v. O.F.M. Co. (1984), 143 N.C. App. 656 - Merrick v. Peterson (2001)
40 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 Mobley v. . Griffin · WACHOVIA BANK & TRUST COMPANY v. Miller · Hayes v. Ricard · Christman v. . Hilliard · Walker v. Story
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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“alone or together with his predecessors in title, shall have been vested with any estate in real property”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“the fact that the defendants were in possession of the lands in question serves as a defense against a competing marketable record title but does not, under the Marketable Title Act, establish title in the defendants. Stated differently, whatever rights the defendants have because they are in possession of the property are not taken away by a competing marketable record title but the mere fact of possession by the defendants does not alone establish their ownership of the land. It (possession) only protects whatever ownership the defendants already have on the date that marketability is to be determined.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“It is the purpose of the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina to provide that if a person claims title to real property under a chain of record title for 30 years, and no other person has filed a notice of any claim of interest in the real property during the 30-year period, then all conflicting claims based upon any title transaction prior to the 30-year period shall be extinguished.”
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.