Trice v. Comstock’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

53 federal appellate · 8 district · 29 state decisions

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 106 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ * * * The law peremptorily forbids every one who, in a fiduciary relation, has acquired information concerning or interest in the business or property of his correlate from using that knowledge or interest to prevent the latter from •accomplishing the purpose of the relation. If one ignores or violates this prohibition, the law charges the interest or the property which he acquires in this way with a trust for the benefit of the other party to the relation, at the option of the latter, while it denies to the former all commission or compensation for his services. This inexorable principle of the law is not based upon, nor conditioned by, the respective interests or powers of the parties to the relation, the times, when that relation commences or terminates, or the injury or damage which the betrayal of the confidence given entails. It rests upon a broader foundation, upon that sagacious public policy which, for the purpose of removing all temptation, removes all possibility that a trustee may de-; rive profit from the subject-matter of his trust, so that one whose confidence has been betrayed may enforce the trust which arises under this rule of law although he has sustained no damage, although the confidential relation has terminated before the trust was betrayed, although he had no legal or equitable interest in the property, and although his correlate who acquired it had no joint interest in or discretionary power over it. The only indispensable elements of a good cause ”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Gaines v. Chew · Johnson v. Umsted

2. ““Wherever one person is placed In such a relation to another by the ad, or consent of that other, or by the aet of a third person, or of the law, that he becomes interested for him, or interested with him, in any subject of property or business, ho is in such a fiduciary relation with him that he is prohibited from acquiring rights in that subject antagonistic to the person with whose interests he has become associated. “A violation of this inhibition, and the acquisition by one of the parties, by means of interest or information acquired through the fiduciary relation of any property or interest, which prevents or hinders his correlate in accomplishing the object of the agency, charges the property thus acquired with a constructive trust for the benefit of the latter, which may be enforced or renounced by him, at his option. “The test of such a trust is the fiduciary relation, and a, betrayal of the confidence imposed under it to acquire the property. Neither a legal nor equitable interest by either party, during the relation, in the property subsequently acquired, nor authority in either to buy or sell it, nor damage to the party betrayed, nor the existence of the fiduciary relation at the time the confidence is abused, is indispensable to the existence and enforcement of the trust. The existence of the relation, and a subsequent abuse of the confidence bestowed under it for the purpose of acquiring the property, are alone sufficient to authorize the enforcement of the trus”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Iroquois Iron Co. v. Kruse

3. ““From the agreement which underlies and conditions these fiduciary relations, the law both implies a contract and imposes a duty that the servant shall be faithful to his master, the attorney to his client, the agent to his principal, the trustee to his cestui que trust, that each shall work and act with an eye single to the interest of his correlate, and that no one of them shall use the interest or knowledge which he acquires through the relation so as to defeat or hinder the other party to it in accomplishing any of the purposes for which it was created.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Munro v. Smith