Lee v. Munroe’s Empirical Analysis
11 U.S. 366 · 1813
Citation profile
31 federal appellate · 11 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 82 later decisions (14 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2006 · most notably Heckler v. Community Health Services of Crawford County, Inc. (1984), Office of Personnel Management v. Richmond (1990)
31 federal appellate · 11 district · 5 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 Preston v. Tremble
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 82 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““If the commissioners acted fraudulently, which is not pretended, they may be personally liable in damages to the plaintiff; but if it were a mistake, and such it is represented to be, the court has already said that the interests of the United States cannot, and ought not, to be affected by it. Were it otherwise, an officer intrusted with the sales of public lands, or empowered to make contracts for such sales, might by inadvertence, or incautiously giving’ information to others, destroy the lien of his principals on very valuable and large tracts of real estate, and even produce alienations of them without any consideration whatever being received. It is better that an individual should now and then suffer by such mistakes than to introduce a rule against an abuse, of which, by improper collusions, it would be very difficult for the public to protect itself.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“It is, however, not known to the Court, that the same rule of decision has been extended so as to affect the interests of principals, and particularly of the public, in consequence of similar mistakes made by an agent, nor is it reasonable that such extension should take place, unless it most manifestly appear that the agent was acting within the scope of his authority, and was empowered, in his capacity of agent, to make the declaration or representation which is relied on as the ground of relief.”
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.