65 Wash. 2d 749 - Bicknell v. Guenther’s Empirical Analysis
1965
Citation profile
8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently February 2013
8 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 Alexander v. Lewes · McCullough v. McCullough · Swingley v. Daniels · Perkins v. Allen · Olsen v. Hoag
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Several of plaintiff’s witnesses testified as to what the father said: Mervin Anderson: [D]ecedent mentioned the fact many times how involved [plaintiff] was in working on the place and improving it. He mentioned the fact that he knows it will be his any way. Bill McCowan: [Decedent] stated that [plaintiff] was going to have the farm some day because [plaintiff] was doing all the work. Lawrence Wilhelm: [Decedent] just outright stated that he was going to leave it to [plaintiff], Wilma Wilhelm: [Decedent] said that [plaintiff] was always taking care of him and he’d leave it to [plaintiff], Henry King: [Decedent said] I’m leaving this to [plaintiff] for taking care of me. Betty Birchall: [Decedent said the farm] belongs to my son . . . He has been doing all this work to improve the property and it belongs to him. John Kamas: [Decedent] said that [the farm] should go to [plaintiff] because he was the only one that did any work on it. From these statements, one may speculate whether the decedent recognized some moral obligation to the plaintiff. The statements, however, fail to show he recognized any legal contractual obligation to the plaintiff. Expressions of testamentary intent like these do not prove the making of a contract, nor do they indicate the terms of a contract.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Bale v. Allison“[I]t is immaterial whether the compensation received by plaintiff for his services [was] above, below, or equal to the going wage for farm hands in the community at that time. The argument that nobody would have worked so hard for that compensation without a contract with [decedent] to leave him the farm and other property is a pure nonsequitur as proof of the existence of such a contract.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“We also have in mind the following rule: Cases of this kind are not favored and, when the promise rests in parol, are even regarded with suspicion, and will not be enforced except upon the strongest evidence that it was founded upon a valuable consideration and deliberately entered into by the deceased. Alexander v. Lewes, 104 Wash. 32 , 175 Pac. 572 . (p 704)”
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.