Spring Company v. Knowlton’s Empirical Analysis
103 U.S. 49 · 1880
Citation profile
28 federal appellate · 12 district · 49 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 136 later decisions (8 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2003 · most notably Crawford v. United States (1909), Continental Wall Paper Company v. Louis Voight & Sons Company (1909)
28 federal appellate · 12 district · 49 state decisions — followed in 25 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 Elmendorf v. Taylor · Thomas v. City of Richmond · Jefferson Branch Bank v. Skelly · Palmer v. Oakley
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 136 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Where money has been paid upon an illegal contract, it is a general rule that if the contract be executed and both parties are in pari delicto, neither of them can recover from the other the money so paid, but if the contract continules executory and the party paying the money be desirous of rescinding it, he may do so and recover back by action of indebitatus assumpsit for money had and received.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is to be observed that tbe making of the illegal contract was malum prohibitum and not malum in se. There is no moral turpitude in such a contract.””
3 later decisions 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.