Villa v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently December 2021
15 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 Harmon v. Emerson · Stevens v. Stevens · Boutin v. Dionne
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The statutorily specified factors are nothing more or less than itemized considerations that the trial judge would, in absence of statute, naturally take into account in exercising his [or her] sound judgment on the sensitive issue of child custody.” Villa v. Smith, 534 A.2d 1310, 1313 (Me.1987). The factors allow”
3 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. C.E.W. v. D.E.W. · C.E.W. v. D.E.W.“[T]he question that the court must first consider on a motion to modify a custody arrangement is whether there “[h]as occurred since the prior custody order a change in circumstances sufficiently substantial in its effect upon the best interests of the children as to justify a modification of the custody arrangement.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Cloutier v. Lear“the trial court to retain sufficient flexibility to fulfill its function as parens patriae to the child.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Cew v. Dew
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.