McKey v. Lee’s Empirical Analysis
105 F. 923 · 1901
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 7 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 1980
5 federal appellate · 7 district ·
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.
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“‘‘There is nothing in the employment of the word ‘recoverable’ that forces such an interpretation. The primary definition of the word is to ‘regain,’ to ‘get back again.’ Cent. Diet. Anything is ‘recoverable’ when it is susceptible of being ‘regained,’ ‘gotten back.’ The law provides alternatively for the regaining of the preferential payments by the trustee, first, by visiting the creditor with the danger of a penalty,—the disallowance of any portion of his claim; and, second!}', in case of the knowing creditor, the right upon the part of the trustee to bring a suit, in either ease the payments are gotten back, there is a recovery, and in both, whether under stress of the penalty or by virtue of a suit, it is the law that makes them recoverable. Such interpretation compasses the reasonable purpose of the provision. It leaves the estate unimpaired, for the property of the creditor coming into the debtor’s estate is presumably the equivalent of the money value at which it was purchased. It, in substance, simply cancels the effect of the preference to the extent only that sueh preference no longer harms the interests of the other creditors.” > ■”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““A person shall be deemed to have given a preference if, being insolvent, he has procured or suffered a judgment to be entered against himself in favor of any person, or made a transfer of any of his property, and the effect of the enforcement of sueh judgment or transfer will be to enable any one of-his creditors to obtain a greater percentage of his debt than any other of such creditors of the same class.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““If a creditor has been preferred and afterwards, in good faith, gives the debtor further credit without security of any kind, for property which becomes a part of the debtor’s estate, the amount of such new credit remaining unpaid, at the time of the adjudication in bankruptcy, may be set off against the amount which would otherwise be recoverable from him.””
2 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.