Howe v. Wilson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 1 district · 17 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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Coming, then, to the question in dispute in this case, two things are to be kept in view whieh render it unnecessary to examine a number of cases cited by the plaintiff. In the first place, the bequest is for charitable institutions. The testator must be taken to have used the word 'charitable’ in its legal signification. No question, then, can arise as to the character of the bequest. The trustee has no power to dispose of the fund for any purpose other than that strictly charitable. In the next place, there is a living trustee in whom the testator vested the power to divide the fund among such institutions as he should deem worthy. Though the institutions are not designated, yet the means of designating them is provided. * * * The question, then, is, with the bequest purely charitable, and a trustee with power to execute it, is it void for uncertainty? Mr. Perry says: ‘There is a wide distinction between a gift to charity, and a gift to a trustee to be by him applied to charity; * * * in the second ease, the court has jurisdiction over tho trustee, as it has over all trustees, to see that he does not commit a broach of his trust, or apply the funds in bad faith, or, to purposes that are not charitable. * * * ’ “In Chambers v. City of St. Louis, supra, tho devise was: ‘In trust to be and constitute a fund to furnish relief to all poor emigrants and travelers coming to St. Louis on their way, bona fide, to settle in the west.’ That devise was held valid, and sufficiently def”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Irwin v. Swinney