Pullman's Palace Car Co v. Missouri Pac Ry Co’s Empirical Analysis
Citation profile
7 federal appellate · 2 district · 57 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 86 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 1987 · most notably United States ex rel. Attorney General of the United States v. Delaware & Hudson Co. (1909), Burnet v. Commonwealth Improvement Co. (1932)
7 federal appellate · 2 district · 57 state decisions — followed in 26 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 Shields v. Ohio · Louisville v. Palmes · Railroad Company v. Maine · Insurance Company v. Wolef · Central Railroad and Banking Company v. Georgia
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 86 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The Missouri Pacific Company has bought the stock of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Company, and has effected a satisfactory election of directors; but this is all. It has all the advantages of a control of the road, but that is not in law the control itself. Practically it may control the company, but the company alone controls its road. In a sense, the stockholders of a corporation own its property, but they are not the managers of its business, or in the immediate control of its affairs. Ordinarily they elect the governing body of the corporation, and that body controls its property. Such is the case here. The Missouri Pacific Company owns enough of the stock of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern to control the election of directors, and this it has done. The directors now control the road through their own agents and executive officers, and these agents and officers are in no way under the direction of the Missouri Pacific Company. If they or the directors act contrary to the wishes of the Missouri Pacific Company, that company has no power to prevent it, except by the election, at the proper time and in the proper way, of other directors, or by some judicial proceeding for the protection of its interest as a stockholder. Its rights and its powers are those of the stockholder only. It is not the corporation, in the sense of that term as applied to the management of the corporate business or the control of the corporate property.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.