St. Louis, Vandalia & Terre Haute Railroad v. Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad’s Empirical Analysis
145 U.S. 393 · 1892
Citation profile
66 federal appellate · 17 district · 42 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 201 later decisions (8 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Union Pac Ry Co v. Chicago R I P Ry Co Union Pac Ry Co (1896), California Bank v. Kennedy (1897)
66 federal appellate · 17 district · 42 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 Bank of Augusta v. Earle · Central Transportation Co. v. Pullman's Palace Car Co. · Union Trust Co of New York v. Illinois Midland Ry Co Borg · Thomas v. Railroad Co. · Canada Southern Ry Co v. Gebhard Same
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 201 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““When the parties are in pari delicto, and the contract has been fully executed on the part of the plaintiff, by the conveyance of property, or by the payment of money, and has not been repudiated by the defendant, it is now equally well settled that neither a court of law nor a court of equity will assist the plaintiff to recover back the property conveyed or money paid under the contract. Thomas v. Richmond, above cited; Ayerst v. Jenkins, L.R. 16 Eq. 275, 284. “For instance, property conveyed pursuant to a. contract made in consideration of the compounding of a crime, and the stifling of a criminal prosecution, and therefore clearly illegal, cannot be recovered back at law, nor the conveyance set aside in equity, unless obtained by such fraud or oppression on the part of the grantee that the conveyance cannot be considered the voluntary act of the grantor. Inhabitants of Worcester v. Eaton, 11 Mass. 368 , and 13 Mass. 371 [ 7 Am.Dec. 155 ] ; Atwood v. Fisk, 101 Mass. 363 [ 100 Am.Dec. 124 ] ; Bryant v. Peck & Whipple Co., 154 Mass. 460 , 28 N.E. 678 ; Williams v. Bayley, L.R. 1 H.L. 200; Jones v. Merionethshire Society, 1892, 1 Ch. 173, 182, 185, 187.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““If the contract is illegal, affirmative relief against it will not be granted, at law or in equity, unless the contract remains executory."”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Although this statute, in terms, declares that any such lease, made without the written consent of the Illinois stockholders, ‘shall be null and void,’ it would seem to have been enacted for the protection of such stockholders alone, and intended to be availed of by them only. It did not limit the scope of the powers conferred upon the corporation by law, an excess of which could not be ratified or be made good by estoppel; but only prescribed regulations as to the manner of exercising corporate powers, compliance with which the stockholders might waive, or the corporation might be estopped, by lapse of time, or otherwise, to deny.””
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.