Burrier v. Jones’s Empirical Analysis
1936
Citation profile
37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently November 2009 · most notably Mercantile-Commerce Bank & Trust Co. v. Binowitz (1951), Scullin v. Mercantile-Commerce Bank & Trust Co. (1950)
37 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 Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward · Trustees of the Philadelphia Baptist Ass'n v. Hart's Executors · Attorney-General v. Utica Insurance · Chambers v. City of St. Louis · Lackland v. Walker
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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The controlling rule in construing wills in this State, to which all technical rules of construction must give way, is to give effect to the true intent and meaning of the testator as the same may be gathered from the whole instrument, if not violative of some established rule of law; and in arriving at that intention, the relation of the testator to the beneficiaries named in the will and the circumstances surrounding him at the time of its execution are to be taken into consideration, and the will read as near as may be from his standpoint, giving effect, if possible, to every clause and portion of *Page 1204 it, and to this end, if need be, words may be supplied and omitted, and sentences transposed.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Humphreys v. Welling“Whatever may be the rule in other states, it is well established in this state that in pursuing the general presumption [against intestacy], and to prevent the happening of the incongruous condition of the estate passing partly by will and partly by descent, words may be supplied, transformed, or changed in the will, so ‘that the instrument may not perish and the manifest intent of the parties be not defeated by the palpable error of the scrivener.’”
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.