Wisner v. Chandler’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

34 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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is a rule of law because it is a rule of common experience that a creation of the mind may be of such a character and may occur under such circumstances that it proves the sanity of the creative act.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. DeCrow v. Harkness · Foulks v. McCray

2. ““While the course of the disease is chronic and advances to a fatal end, it develops gradually and is quite variable in duration. It usually lasts several years, although a few acute cases have been observed. It is sometimes subject to remissions in which mental balance is regained. Defects of memory are the earliest symptoms, first, memories of recent things, and then older memories. Afterwards the power of intellectual comprehension and assimilation is lessened, the judgment begins to fail, ethical feelings degenerate, the will becomes weakened, coarser instincts acquire ascendency, hallucinations and illusions manifest themselves, and the mental reduction continues until the extreme degree of dementia is reached. “When a will has been made after some or many of the symptoms of senile dementia have been observed the law does not say, these symptoms prove the testator had senile dementia, senile dementia destroys the mind, consequently the will was made by one of unsound mind. The question of testamentary capacity remains in substance and effect just what it was in the Marquis of Winchester’s Case, decided by the court of King’s Bench at the Trinity term, held in the forty-third year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. ■ “ ‘And because it appeared by divers witnesses, and by many notorious circumstances, that the said Marquess being sick et multa provectus senectute, was not of sane and perfect memory, such as the law requires at the time of the making of the said supposed will”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Milkey v. Cross

3. ““In making findings of fact the court stated evidentiary facts from which its ultimate conclusion of testamentary incapacity was derived. It undertook to state all the principal facts indicating unsoundness of mind, including some which served merely to combat the inference of mental capacity. Facts warranting the inference of mental capacity were likewise found, but twenty or more requests for further findings, out of a much longer list, based upon evidence indicating soundness of mind, some of which was undisputed and all of which was clear and highly probative, were denied. The result is the judgment can not be affirmed, because of the rule established by the decision in the case of Nordman v. Johnson, 94 Kan. 409 , 146 Pac. 1125 .” (p. 37.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Fuller v. Williams