Shailer v. Bumstead’s Empirical Analysis
1868
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 135 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 147 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2020 · most notably Mutual Life Ins Co of New York v. Hillmon (1892), Shepard v. United States (1933)
3 federal appellate · 135 state decisions — followed in 32 states
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 Comstock v. Hadlyme Ecclesiastical Society · Jackson ex dem. Coe v. Kniffen · Commonwealth v. Battis
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 147 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“‘ ‘ That the instrument which contains the testamentary disposition of a competent person, executed freely and with all requisite legal formalities, must stand as the only evidence of such disposal, is generally conceded. Such a will is not to be controlled in its plain meaning by evidence of verbal statements inconsistent with it; nor impaired in its validity and effect by afterthoughts or changes in the wishes or purposes of the maker, however distinctly asserted. It is to be revoked only by some formal written instrument, some intentional act of destruction or cancellation, or such change of circumstances as amounts in law to a revocation. Any invasion of this rule opens the way to fraud and perjury; promotes controversy; destroys to a greater or less degree that security which should be afforded to the exercise of the power to control the succession to one’s property after death.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Estate of Gleason““The declarations of the testator accompanying the act must always be resorted to as the most satisfactory evidence to sustain or defend the will whenever this issue is presented. So it is uniformly held that the previous declarations of the testator, offered to prove the mental facts involved, are competent. Intention, purpose, mental peculiarity and condition, are mainly ascertainable through the medium afforded by the power of language. Statements and declarations, when the state of the mind is the fact to be shown, are therefore received as mental acts or conduct.””
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.