Miller v. Miller’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 53 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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The words ‘conveyances of land,’ mean, of course, the land itself in fee simple absolute. The words, ‘any other estate or interest therein,’ include estates of freehold and less than freehold, of inheritance and not of inheritance, absolute and limited, present and future, vested and contingent, and any other kind a grantor may choose to invent, consistent, of course, with public policy.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Cress v. Hamnett · McCartney v. Robbins

2. ““The words ‘conveyances of land’ mean, of course, the land itself in fee simple absolute. The words ‘any other estate or interest therein’ include estates of freehold and less than freehold, of inheritance and not of inheritance, absolute and limited, present and future, vested and contingent, and any other kind a grantor may choose to invest consistent, of course, with public policy. * * * “The Legislature of 1855 placed conveyances by deed on the same footing as wills so far as the creation of future estates was concerned; but, following the lead of the Legislatures of some of the older states, the Kansas Legislature of 1868 undertook not only to permit the granting of future estates but to abolish other common-law restrictions on alienation not suited to allodial tenures and modem conveyancing, and to make transfers of interests in land as free as possible. The concluding portion of section 3 of the aet of 1868, quoted above, expressly abolishes the common-law ceremony of livery of seisin which stood as an insuperable bar to the creation of freeholds to begin in futuro unless supported by a particular estate. The language was adapted from statutes of other states which usually provided that deeds duly acknowledged and recorded should be valid and pass estates in land ‘without livery of seisin, attornment, or other ceremony whatever.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Shell Petroleum Corp. v. Hollow

3. ““If a testator devise an estate for life to his widow, with remainder over in fee, and the widow elect to take under the law and not under the will, the remainder is ordinarily accelerated to take effect as if the widow had died. The rule is equitable in character and proceeds upon the assumption that the gift over of the fee was the principal thing in the testator’s mind, that the life estate was a mere charge on that gift, and that he desired the gift in fee to take effect whenever the life estate for any cause was out of the way.” (p. 6.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Sherman v. Critzer