Harmon v. Brown’s Empirical Analysis
1877
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently February 1934
16 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 Mack v. Mulcahy
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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Doubtless, if the testator had devised to his widow an estate for life, or in fee, dependent upon the condition that she should not marry, the devise would have been good and the condition void; but such is not the case here. Here, as has been already said, the estate was limited to her during her widowhood. A man may devise property to his widow during her widowhood. He is not obliged to devise to her a larger estate, as for life or in fee, in order to accomplish that purpose. But if he desires to devise a larger estate, as for life or in fee, and so expresses himself in his will, but makes it dependent upon the condition that she should not marry, the condition will be regarded as in terrorem and void. Such condition will not cut down an estate to a period less than that to which it is limited.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“■ “First, I give and bequeath unto my beloved wife, Penina, during her widowhood, all my real and personal estate, to be held and freely possessed and enjoyed during her widowhood.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Hibbits v. Jack
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.