Payne v. Payne’s Empirical Analysis
1891
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently September 2017
2 federal appellate · 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.
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The evidence shows ... a literal compliance with the law in every respect, except that the testator asked [the justice of the peace] to put his official certificate to the will, instead of formally asking him to sign it as a witness. ... [W]e can see no reason, in law or justice, why the effect of an ordinary attestation should be denied to it. Whether testifying through his certificate, or as a witness in a probate proceeding, [the justice of the peace] was asked to bear witness to the fact that the writing had been subscribed by and was the will of the testator. That is the ordinary office of a witness, and as such [the justice of the peace] signed the will.”
1 later decision 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.