Wilke v. Finn’s Empirical Analysis
1931
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 25 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2011 · most notably Griffin v. McCoach (1941), Kaufman v. Blackman (1951)
9 federal appellate · 25 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 Warnock v. Davis · Cheeves v. Anders, Administrator · Nixon v. New York Life Insurance Co. · Equitable Life Insurance v. Hazlewood · Cammack v. Lewis
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.
“When an insurance company has issued a policy upon the life of a person, payable to one who has no insurable interest in the life insured, or when a policy has been assigned to one having no such interest, the insurance company must nevertheless pay the full amount of the policy, if otherwise liable, because it has so contracted; and it is no concern of the insurer as to who gets the proceeds, except to see that it is paid to the proper parties, under its agreement. It is simply required to perform its contract, and the law will dispose of the money according to the rights of the parties.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[A] person designated in the policy as the beneficiary, [may be treated], when he has no insurable interest, as an assignee, appointee, or trustee, to receive the proceeds for whoever may be lawfully entitled to enjoy them. The insurer will then be required to pay the sum it has promised to pay, and the money cannot be appropriated by anybody not having a legitimate right to it.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“has an interest that no inducement shall be offered to one man to take the life of another.”); Tamez, 999 S.W.2d at 15 (”
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.