Scipio v. Wright’s Empirical Analysis
101 U.S. 665 · 1879
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 1988 · most notably Knox County v. Ninth Nat Bank of City of New York (1893), Hardt v. Heidweyer (1894)
4 federal appellate · 3 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 Starin v. . the Town of Genoa · Gould v. . Town of Oneonta
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Some time after January 7, 1854, — when does not exactly appear,- — Slocum Howland bought the seventeen bonds from the railroad company, with notice that money liad not been borrowed upon them, but that they had been transferred by the town supervisor and railroad commissioners, or one or more of them, in the first instance, to the company, in exchange for its stock. What Howland paid for them — whether the company obtained their full par value— is not proved. Howland held the bonds until 1874, after they became due, when lie sold them to the plaintiff, taking his note for the whole price; and that note remains unpaid. Neither Howland, therefore, nor Wright, the purchaser from him, .stands in the position of a bona fide purchaser without notice of the exchange of (he bonds for stock. Had either of them been such a purchaser. the plaintiff’s right to recover could not he gainsaid. But the question now is whether the fact that the bonds were not issued for borrowed money, but were exchanged for stock of the railroad company, is a defense for the town against a holder who, when he purchased, had notice of the manner of their issue. Were the question an open one, it would seem that it ought not to he a defense.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““(3) The fact that the bonds were not issued for borrowed money, but were exchanged for stock of the railroad company, is, according to the New York decisions, a defense for the town against a holder who, when he purchased, had notice of the manner of their issue, which decisions this court follows in this case. (4) A bona fide holder, who had no knowledge that the railroad company had received, the bonds in payment for the stock taken for the town, would not be liable to such a defense.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.