Appleton v. Rea’s Empirical Analysis
1945
Citation profile
40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions — most recently March 2015 · most notably 262 Ill. App. 3d 419 - Coussee v. Estate of Efston (1994), 134 Ill. App. 3d 504 - In Re Estate of Laas (1985)
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 Dahmer v. Wensler · Kurtz v. Hibner · Fleming v. Dillon · Cahill v. Michael · Dollander v. Dhaemers
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.
“the will cannot be reformed to conform to any intent of the testator not expressed in it, no matter how clearly a different intent may be proved by extrinsic evidence. The reason is that, if the rule were otherwise, all wills would be subject to proof of mistake and of a different intention from that expressed, so that, in fact, property would pass without a will in writing, which the law demands.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The rule [regarding extrinsic circumstances of the testator's intent] has never been so applied to wills that explaining the ambiguity in one clause operates to reform or vary the devise to another person, in another part of the will, which contains no ambiguity.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.