Bull v. First Nat Bank of Kasson’s Empirical Analysis
123 U.S. 105 · 1887
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 5 district · 44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 72 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 1994 · most notably Thompson v. Sioux Falls National Bank (1893), Deal v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. (1932)
3 federal appellate · 5 district · 44 state decisions — followed in 16 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 Merchants' Bank v. State Bank · Partridge v. The Insurance Company · Jones v. Fales · Guy Irvine v. Nathaniel a Lowry
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 72 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Again many courts have hold that a clause providing for payment in ‘currency’ or ‘current funds’ does not require payment in money, and hence destroys the negotiability of the instrument. The cases so holding are either cases arising at a time when many forms of bank notes and bills were in use, varying in their values, or cases decided upon the authority of that class, without regard to changed conditions. Commencing with the first issue in this country of notes declared to have the quality of legal tender, it became a common practice of drawers of bills of exchange or checks, or makers of promissory notes, to indicate whether the same were to be paid in gold or silver, or in such notes, and the term ‘current funds’ has been used to designate in fact any of these; all being current, and declared, by positive enactment, to be legal tender. Accordingly the modern and better doctrine is that the terms ‘currency’ and ‘current funds,’ when used in commercial transactions as the expression of the medium of payment, should be construed to mean current money, funds which are current by law as money, and that, when thus construed, an instrument payable in currency or current funds is in this respect negotiable. These authorities in substance hold that the terms ‘currency’ or ‘current funds’ used in commercial paper, ex vi termini, mean money; it has been held, however, that the term ‘currency’ means current money, where this interpretation is not controlled by the positive terms of ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““Bank checks are not inland, bills of exchange, but have many of the properties of such commercial paper; and many of the rules of the law merchant are alike applicable to both.””
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.