Gardner v. Viall’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

15 state decisions

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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In Thayer v. Paulding, supra ( 200 Mass. 98 , 85 N. E. 868 ), where a testator, owning three hundred and seventy-five shares gave ‘one hundred and twenty-five shares of the capital stock’ of a corporation, on page 101 it is said: ‘A very slight indication of an intention to give shares then in his ownership is sufficient to make the legacy specific in a case like this.’ “But in the present case we are not left to rely for the ascertaining of the intention of the testatrix as to the character of these legacies upon the simple fact of the identity in amount of the stock of the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company owned by her when she made her will and of the amount of such stock disposed of thereby. In ‘paragraph twenty-ninth,’ already quoted, she says: ‘I hereby declare that the legacies under this will may be paid in money or in such bonds, stocks, mortgages or -other securities not hereinbefore specifically bequeathed as I may possess at the time of my death, or partly in each.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In Re Mandelle's Estate