5 Va. App. 161 - Smith v. Pond’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently March 2005
22 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 2 Va. App. 178 - Venable v. Venable · Bailes v. Sours · Judd v. Van Horn · Shortridge v. Deel
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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In all child custody cases, including those between a parent and nonparent, the best interests of the child are paramount and form the lodestar for the guidance of the court in determining the dispute .... In custody disputes between a natural parent and a nonparent, the law presumes the best interest of the child will be served when in the custody of the natural parent .... Based on this presumption, the rights of the [natural] parents may not be lightly severed but are to be respected if at all consonant with the best interest of the child.... To overcome the strong presumption favoring a parent, the nonparent must adduce by clear and convincing evidence that: (1) the parents are unfit; (2) a court previously has granted an order of divestiture; (3) the parents voluntarily relinquished custody; (4) the parents abandoned the child; or (5) special facts and circumstances constitute extraordinary reasons to take the child from the parents.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. In re Eddings · In re Lyles
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.