Lees v. Howarth’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently October 1981
5 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 In re the Accounting of Keyserling · Boyden v. Stevens · Industrial Trust Co. v. Saunders · Metcalf v. Gladding · 90 N.J. Eq. 329 - Strong v. Dann
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the intent of the testator must be ascertained if possible from the language of the will * * * as a whole. In discovering that intent, the words used are to be given their primary, ordinary and common meaning, unless it plainly appears that they are used in another sense. * * That intent, when ascertained, is to be given effect unless contrary to law. [Lees v. Howarth, 85 R.I. 321 , 131 A.2d 229 , 230-31 (1957).]”
2 later decisions 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.