Milbrath v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1909
Citation profile
31 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently October 1968 · most notably State v. Parker (1930), Kennedy v. State (1935)
31 state decisions — followed in 20 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 People v. North River Sugar Refining Co. · Hoffman Steam Coal Co. v. Cumberland Coal & Iron Co. · Paulson v. State · James Pott & Co. v. Schmucker · People v. Hawkins
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““If the defendant and Wagner chose to make this insolvent corporation, in which they were the solé and controlling stockholders and of which they were officers, the repository of trust funds collected by them, it had no other effect in the law than if they delivered such funds into the possession of any trustee or subordinate employee controlled by them, whose possession must be deemed their possession and whose acquisition must be deemed their acquisition. The corporation is in such case a mere instrumentality through and by means of which the natural persons in control thereof carry out their acts.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Weber v. State““It is paid into that which is a mere instrumentality created by him under sanction of law, but as much under his control and as subservient to his will as the furniture of his office or the books of account in which he records his transactions. Under such circumstances there is no room for the legal fiction of separate corporate personality or for distinction between the defendant’s acts as officer of the corporation arid his acts as an independent natural person.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Weber v. State
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.