81 W. Va. 761 - Smith v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1918
Citation profile
23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 23 later decisions — most recently November 2001
23 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 Samuel Gompers v. Buck's Stove & Range Company · Cariens v. Cariens · State ex rel. Mason v. Harper's Ferry Bridge Co. · Norfolk & W. Ry. Co. v. Pinnacle Coal Co. · State v. Fredlock
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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Without power and authority to [sanction civil contempt], a court of equity would be unable in many instances, to effectuate legal right and justice between the parties. To make such a proceeding purely criminal in legal contemplation and limit the jurisdiction to the law courts necessarily strips the courts ... of power essential to the due and efficient exercise of their jurisdiction....”
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.