7 Ill. 2d 106 - Bradley v. Fox’s Empirical Analysis
1955
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 78 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 85 later decisions — most recently July 2009 · most notably 18 Ill. 2d 11 - Molitor v. Kaneland Community Unit District No. 302 (1959), 61 Ill. 2d 31 - Mattyasovszky v. West Towns Bus Co. (1975)
5 federal appellate · 78 state decisions — followed in 13 states
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 Beatty v. . Guggenheim Exploration Co. · Riggs v. . Palmer · Mutual Life Ins Co of New York v. Armstrong · Perry v. Strawbridge · Price v. Hitaffer
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 85 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Contracts and other instruments creating rights should properly be construed in the light of prevailing public policy evidenced in the statutes. [Citations.] The Illinois statute prohibiting the devolution of property to a convicted murderer from his victim, while not determinative of the rights of the parties in this situation, does evince a legislative policy to deny the convicted murderer the fruits of his crime.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent““[T]he social interest served by refusing to permit the criminal to profit by his crime is greater than that served by the preservation and enforcement of legal rights of ownership.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“"In the insurance cases the courts, practically with unanimity, construe the insurance policy in the light of the fundamental common-law maxim originating in English law that no man shall profit by his own wrong, and follow the approach of the early United States Supreme Court case of N.Y. Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Armstrong, 117 U.S. 591 , which held that a person who procured a policy upon the life of another, payable to himself, and then murdered the assured could not recover thereon. Mr. Justice Field stated: ‘It would be a reproach to the jurisprudence of the country if one could recover insurance money payable on the death of a party whose life he had feloniously taken.’ In conformity therewith, the Illinois courts in Supreme Lodge Knights of Honor v. Menkhausen, 209 Ill. 277 , and Illinois Bankers Life Assn. v. Collins, 341 Ill. 548 , construed insurance contracts as though the public policy and this common-law maxim were part of the contract, and denied recovery on the policy to the murderer or his heirs.” (Emphasis added.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.