Simonds v. Simonds’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
54 federal appellate · 9 district · 48 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 366 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2025 · most notably Ridgway v. Ridgway (1981), In Re: Koreag, Controle Et Revision S.A. (1992)
54 federal appellate · 9 district · 48 state decisions — followed in 16 states
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.
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 366 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“under such circumstances that in equity and good conscience he ought not to retain it”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'A constructive trust is the formula through which the conscience of equity finds expression. When property has been acquired in such circumstances that the holder of the legal title may not in good conscience retain the beneficial interest, equity converts him into a trustee.'”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a]lthough the factors are useful in many cases constructive trust doctrine is not rigidly limited,”
3 later decisions 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.