Harrington v. Stees’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““At common law, it was not essential to the validity of a nuncupative will that the testator should have been ill at all. The statute is,, in this regard, a limitation of the common law powers. The words ‘in the time of the last sickness’ had no technical signification at the time of the passage of the statute. These words must be taken in their ordinary signification. The courts have no power to take from or add to the statute. It is their duty to carry out the will of the legislature as found in the words of the statute, and the necessary and reasonable implications arising from these words. The statute requires it to be proven that the will was made ‘in the last sickness.’ It is a reasonable and necessary implication that it must also appear that the testator, at the time of making the will, supposed that his then sickness would prove his last sickness—in other words, that he should be impressed with the probability that he would never recover.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Baird v. Baird · In re the Estate of Miller