Burns v. Clark’s Empirical Analysis
1862
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently April 1973
2 federal appellate · 8 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 Robertson v. Caw
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“There is a modification of the strictness of the common law as to conditions precedent in regard to personal legacies which is at once rational and convenient, and promotive of the real intention of the testator. It is, that where a literal compliance with the condition becomes impossible, from unavoidable circumstances and without any default of the party, it is sufficient that it is complied with as nearly as it practically can be, or (as it is technically called) cy pres. This modification is derived from the civil law and stands upon the presumption that the donor could not intend to require impossibilities, but only a substantial compliance with his directions as far as they should admit of being fairly carried into execution. It is upon this ground that Courts of Equity constantly hold, in cases of personal legacies, that a substantial compliance with the condition satisfies it, although not literally fulfilled. Thus if a legacy upon a condition precedent should require the consent of three persons to a marriage, and one or more of them should die, the consent of the survivor or survivors would be deemed a sufficient compliance with the condition.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“It could hardly have been the intention of the testator that in such case, being in fact worthy, she should lose the bequest, without fault on her part, by the interposition of death or disease. The severe logic of the common law might perhaps demand such a result, but the milder principles of the civil law, followed by the ecclesiastical courts and adopted by equity so far as relates to personal bequests, I think, allow us to reach a result which is, in the language of Justice Story, `at once rational, convenient and promotive of the real intention of the testator.'”
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.