Williams v. Patton’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
50 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 53 later decisions — most recently June 2016 · most notably HOJNOWSKI EX REL. HOJNOWSKI v. Vans Skate Park (2006), Middleton v. Middleton (1993)
50 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Texas Court of Appeals, 1st District (Houston))
Relationships
Relies on Ford v. Ford · Sabine Pilot Service, Inc. v. Hauck · Slay v. Burnett Trust · Puckett v. U.S. Fire Insurance Co. · Juliette Fowler Homes, Inc. v. Welch Associates, Inc.
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 53 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(a) In a contempt proceeding or in rendering a money judgment, the court may not reduce or modify the amount of child support arrearages. (b) The money judgment for arrearages rendered by the court may be subject to a counterclaim or offset as provided by this subchapter.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Lewis v. Lewis · Beck v. Walker“Characterizing arrearages as nothing more than a “debt” owed to the custodial parent ignores the reality that the child is frequently the one who has been harmed by nonpayment and it is the child’s interests which are ultimately sought to be protected.... Although the extent to which a child presently benefits from the payment of arrearages varies from case to case, past due child support is still more properly characterized as an unfulfilled duty to the child than a “debt” to the custodial parent.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“in line with the Texas Supreme Court's pronouncement ... that `the legislature intended that the court closely supervise child support proceedings to guarantee that the best interest of the child is always considered.'”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. In Re ED · In Re Kubankin
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.