Stephenson v. Rowe’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently September 2012
12 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 Mims v. Mims · North Carolina Self Help Corp. v. Brinkley · State v. Freeman · Hodges v. . Stewart · Wallace v. Noland
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.
“Courts generally permit evidence of circumstances outside the will to save a devise when there are both objective references in the devise, such as `homestead tract,' `homeplace,' `the house where we live,' etc., and competent evidence of circumstances tending to show that these references can be fitted to a particular piece of property. . . .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“`to render a will operative and to give effect to [a] testator's intent if reasonable interpretation can be given which is not in contravention of some established rule of law.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[i]t is generally agreed that devises in wills are to be interpreted more liberally than conveyances in deeds in order, if possible, to give effect to the testator's intent.”
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.