Riggs National Bank of Washington v. Summerlin

SPOTTSWOOD W. ROBINSON, III, Circuit Judge

(dissenting):

For me, Johns v. Cobb,1 decided just two years ago, furnishes the necessary guidance toward resolution of cases like the one at bar. There, by an approach sharply divergent from that which my colleagues now pursue, we held that a child adopted in 1924 took under each of two wills bequeathing income from a trust to the “issue” of his adoptive mother. One of wills was executed in 1922 by the adoptive mother’s grandmother, who died in 1928; the other in 1944 by the adoptive mother’s aunt, who died in 1946. Nothing within the wills indicated…