Denniston v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis
106 F.2d 925 · 1939
Citation profile
7 federal appellate · 1 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently May 1984
7 federal appellate · 1 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.
Relationships
Applies 26 U.S.C. § 411 (§ 1012 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974)
Relies on United States v. Wells · Hassett v. Welch · Heiner v. Donnan · Colorado Nat Bank of Denver v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue · Ex parte Hammond
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We believe our conclusion is fortified by the fact that Congress, 5 years after the decision in the Church case, which occasioned the adoption of the exception provision, in reviewing and rearranging the estate tax provisions of the 1954 Code, used the same plain and unambiguous language in section 2036 that had been contained in section 811(c) (1) (B) of the 1939 Code, but separated this provision from those involving transfers in contemplation of death and those taking effect at or after death with which it had been coupled in section 811(c) of the 1939 Code. Section 2036 is entitled ‘Transfers With Retained Life Estates’ and pertains only to transfers under which the transferor retained for life (1) the possession, enjoyment, or right to the income from the property, or (2) the right to designate the persons who shall possess or enjoy the property or the income therefrom. To attempt to apply this section to decedent’s release of her power of appointment in 1942 in this case would require us either to read additional words, such as ‘contemplated’ or ‘irrevocable,’ into the section, or ascribe to the word ‘transfer,’ as used in this section, a meaning which would include not only the normal concept of the word but also concepts which have their foundation, if any, in gift tax or income tax law.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ * * * Nor can the amendment made by the Joint Resolution of March 3, 1931, apply to this case since the transfer under which the decedent reserved her life estate and power of appointment was made in 1915 long before the passage of the Joint Resolution, the operation of which was prospective only. [Case cited.]””
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.