Berkenfield v. Jacobs’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “So if the decree could not have become effective until its recordation, the appellee is the widow of Arthur Jacobs; if, on the other hand, the decree was effective as to the parties when the chancellor signed it, the appellee became a grass widow [2] .... If [the trial judge] was correct in his conclusion about the time the decree became operative, his order of vacation and dismissal was proper because a marital relationship, being purely personal, terminates upon the death of either spouse, and a suit for dissolution of a marriage cannot survive the death of either party.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 743 So. 2d 105 - Barnett v. Barnett

2. “It seems to us that it would be unjustifiable and inequitable to hold in the present situation that the decree was a nullity until the clerk performed the ministerial service of entering it in the chancery order book despite the fact that it would not become a foundation for future proceedings or process....”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 764 So. 2d 578 - Gaines v. Sayne

3. “recordation is procedural and ministerial and that a decree when recorded is but evidence of judicial action already taken; that a failure to perform the act of recording amounts only to `a ministerial misprision' which may be remedied by an order nunc pro tunc.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 764 So. 2d 578 - Gaines v. Sayne