91 N.C. App. 349 - Darnell v. Rupplin’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently September 2017
18 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 Cannon v. Miller · Charnock v. . Taylor · Johnson v. Lamb · 6 N.C. App. 201 - Sebastian v. Kluttz · Oxendine v. Catawba County Department of Social Services
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A claim for “alienation of affections is comprised of wrongful acts which deprive a married person of the affections of his or her spouse—love, society, companionship and comfort of the other spouse. . . . The gist of the tort is an interference with one spouse’s mental attitude toward the other, and the conjugal kindness of the marital relation. . . . [Evidence of alienation] is sufficient if there is no more than a partial loss of [a spouse’s] affections.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“We recognize that the injury attributable to the alienation of another’s affections is a nebulous concept, which, unlike a broken bone, is not a readily identifiable event. The establishment of this tortious injury is further complicated because it may be sustained through one act or through successive acts of a defendant. However, even with this knowledge, as long as this cause of action exists in North Carolina, we conclude that the issue of where the tort took place may not be kept from a jury simply because it is difficult to discern.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“To establish a claim for alienation of affections, plaintiffs evidence must prove: “(1) plaintiff and [her husband] were happily married and a genuine love and affection existed between them; (2) the love and affection was alienated and destroyed; and (3) the wrongful and malicious acts of defendant produced the alienation of affections.””
1 later decision 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.