Comstock's Admr. v. Jacobs’s Empirical Analysis
1915
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently January 1994 · most notably Perkins v. Vermont Hydro-Electric Corp. (1934), Abbiati v. Buttura & Sons, Inc. (1994)
3 federal appellate · 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 State v. Howard · Louisville & Nashville Railroad v. Pearson · State v. Ryder · Billings v. Metropolitan Life Insurance · Jenness v. Simpson
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It would be most unjust to require the defendant to admit having received the bank book and its proceeds and deny him the opportunity to explain how he came by them. Upon the defendant’s theory of the case the transfer of the bank book was one of several facts making up a whole transaction. Having called the defendant as a witness to one of the constituent facts, plaintiff could not object, on any just ground, to his testifying to the whole. To sustain his objection would be to countenance his occupying inconsistent positions. For the protection of the estate which the plaintiff represents, the statute denied the defendant the right to testify in his own behalf. The plaintiff was at liberty to insist upon or waive the benefit of the statute as seemed to him best for the interests of the estate. He could keep the door shut, if he chose to do so; but he could not open it, so far or so long as suited his own purposes, and then close it. Once open it remains open until the end of the litigation.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. In Re Estate of Farr
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.