Sandford v. Stagg’s Empirical Analysis
1930
Citation profile
4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently January 1965
4 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 Scudder's executors v. Vanarsdale · Stoutenburgh v. Moore · Rowley v. Currie · Wright v. Gaskill · Swain v. Frazier
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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The determining factor is tire use of the word ‘respective’ as used in connection with use of the word ‘heirs.’ “The word ‘respective’ is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as meaning ‘relating to particular persons or things, each to each; particular; several; as, their respective homes.’ In the expression in which it is used in the clause under consideration it must accordingly mean the heirs of each child of the testator and relates each heir or group of heirs to his or their ancestor. The implication of the word in this respect is disjunctive, and separates each group of heirs from the other groups. In other words, it seems to me the use of the word ‘respective’ necessarily implied a substitutional or representational intention by the testator. “It will be noted that the expression used by the testator is ‘heirs,’ referring to the heirs of ‘my said children.’ The use of the word ‘heirs’ instead of the word ‘children’ carries with it the idea of representation.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Hoermann v. Hoermann
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.