Goldberg v. Bloch’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
39 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions — most recently December 2016 · most notably 30 Cal. 3d 880 - Estate of Black (1982), Smith v. MacDonald (1972)
39 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 In Re the Estate of Manchester · Marks v. Walter G. McCarty Corp. · Lane v. Walker · Estate of Bernard · Albright v. North
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is settled in California that the signature need not be located at the end [of a holographic will] but may appear in another part of the document, provided the testator wrote his name there with the intention of authenticating or executing the instrument as his will.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“The true rule, as we conceive it to be, is that, wherever placed, the fact that it was intended as an executing signature must satisfactorily appear on the face of the document itself. If it is at the end of the document, the universal custom of mankind forces the conclusion that it was appended as an execution, if nothing to the contrary appears. If placed elsewhere, it is for the court to say, from an inspection of the whole document, its language as well as its form, and the relative position of its parts, whether or not there is a positive and satisfactory inference from the document itself that the signature was so placed with the intent that it should there serve as a token of execution. If such inference thus appears, the execution may be considered as proven by such signature. [Emphasis mine]”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“`When the name is used to identify the decedent as the author of the alleged will ... or to identify the instrument as decedent's will ... and in addition the instrument appears to be a complete testamentary document, it may reasonably be inferred that the name was placed where it was with the intention of executing the instrument. In such cases the name is linked to the alleged testamentary act and the probabilities that it was intended as a signature are strong.'”
2 later decisions 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.