James Adams v. Joseph E Law’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 15 state decisions

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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Hence, in the construction both of wills and deeds, where the instrument has not, so carefully as in the present case, limited the word ‘issue’ to children living, etc., but where the term is used without quali fication, and is in another part of the same instrument supplied by the word child, or children, as a synonym, the courts have uniformly restrained its signification to children. Thus, in Carter v. Bentall, 2 Beav. 557, where the devise was a moiety to ‘issue’ of his daughter, and, if only.one child, then to such one child, and the trustee was ordered to lay out the dividends in the maintenance of such ‘issue,’ Lord Langdale, M. R., held that the word issue was thus explained by the testator to mean ‘children.’ “In the case of Loveday v. Hopkins, Amb. 273, it was held that grandchildren were not entitled under a bequest to ‘heirs’; because the term appeared, by the context of the will, to be used in the sense of children. “In Swift v. Swift, 8 Sim. 168, by marriage articles the jointure property was limited, after the death of the survivor, on the ‘issue’ of the marriage living at the death, in equal share if more than one, and if but one, to go to such ‘child.’ The only child of the marriage died before the contingency, leaving a child. It was held that ‘issue’ was to be construed ‘child,’ and the legacy did not vest in the grandchild.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 16 Wash. 2d 584 - Old National Bank & Union Trust Co. v. Hughes