Kilbourn v. Sunderland’s Empirical Analysis
130 U.S. 505 · 1889
Citation profile
114 federal appellate · 40 district · 75 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 386 later decisions (32 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2006 · most notably City of Walla Walla v. Walla Walla Water Co (1898), Caroline Dobbins v. City of Los Angeles (1904)
114 federal appellate · 40 district · 75 state decisions — followed in 25 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 Reynes v. Dumont · Buzard v. Houston · Antoine Michoud v. Peronne Bernardine Girod · Brant v. Virginia Coal and Iron Company et al.
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 386 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The jurisdiction in equity attaches unless the legal remedy, both in respect to the final relief and the mode of obtaining it, is as efficient as the remedy which equity would confer under the same circumstances.””
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““If a defendant in a suit in equity answers and submits to the jurisdiction of the court, it is too late for him to object that the plaintiff has a plain and adequate rernedy at law. This objection should be taken at the earliest opportunity. The above rule must be taken with the qualification that it is competent for the court to grant the relief sought, and that it has jurisdiction of the subject-matter.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Reasonable diligence is of course essential to invoking the activity of the court, but what constitutes such diligence depends upon the facts of the particular case. Where a party injured by fraud is in ignorance of its existence, the duty to commence proceedings arises only upon discovery- We hold that the complainants moved with sufficient promptness upon discovering the fraud, and that although, reposing confidence in their agents, they may have neglected availing themselves of some source of knowledge they might have sought, the defendants cannot be allowed to say that complainants ought to have suspected them, and are chargeable with what they might have found out upon inquiry aroused by such suspicion.”
2 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.