Sargent v. Blake’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 federal appellate · 8 district · 1 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 29 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The clause of section 5f upon which counsel rely is nothing but the familiar rule of administration of partnership and individual estates, which has been imported into the bankruptcy law from the courts of equity. ‘The net proceeds of the partnership property shall be appropriated to the payment of the partnership debts, and the net proceeds of the individual estate of each partner to the payment of the individual debts.’ The partnership property and the individual estate at what time — four months, or at some indefinite time within four months, before the petition is filed, or at the time it is filed? This section treats of administration in the bankruptcy court, and hence of the partnership and individual property, the title to which is in the bankrupt at the time the petition against him is presented to the court and that which he had transferred in fraud of his creditors. Section 70. Any other interpretation would produce intolerable vexation and confusion, for in the daily conduct of business partners are necessarily and constantly applying partnership property to the payment, not only of large individual obligations, but to the payment of their petty individual debts for living expenses, and are often devoting their individual property to the promotion of the partnership business and the discharge of the partnership debts. It never could have been, it never was, the intention of Congress that these transactions — these transformations of partnership into individual and”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Crawford v. Sternberg · Rapple v. Dutton

2. ““Until partnersMp property is placed, in the custody of tlie law by some suit or act wbicb invokes the interposition of a court to administer it, partners, witb the consent of each, have the right and the powfer to convert it into individual property, to apply it to the payment of individual debts in preference to the debts of the partnership, or .to make any other disposition of it in good faith which does not constitute a voidable preference. Insolvency does not destroy or diminish this right of disposition. The right of the creditors of a partnership to be paid out of the partnership property in preference to the individual creditors does not attach until an application is made to some court for the administration of the partnership property, noi; then unless some partner has at that time that right, for the preferential'equity of the partners is the mere right to enforce the right of the partners to compel such a preference. Before the partnership property is placed in custodia legis it is not held in trust for the partnership creditors, and they have no lien upon it. “When all the partners consent, their application of the partnership property to the payment of an individual debt of a partner within four months of the filing of a petition in bankruptcy, and while the partners and the partnership are insolvent, does not evidence any intent to hinder, delay, or defraud the creditors of the partnership within the meaning of section 67e of the Bankruptcy Act of 1898, and it ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In re Suprenant

3. ““The only evidence that Maxwell intended to hinder or defraud the creditors of the partnership is that, while the firm and the partners were insolvent, King conveyed his interest to Maxwell, and the latter paid his mother in preference to his other creditors. The only way in which Maxwell could have made this payment in had faith would have been to have made it in whole or in part in secret trust for himself, or with the actual intent 1o hinder or defraud the creditors of the company more than the mere payment of the debt to his mother out of the property of the former partt nership, in preference to the claims of the partnership creditors, must necessarily have delayed or prevented their collection of their claims, and there was no evidence of any such trust or intent. The evidence was that he intended to pay his mother in preference to the partnership and to other creditors, that Ms mother had loaned him the money to engage in and conduct the partnership business, that he had purchased the interest of his partner, and that, as soon as the business and the property became his, he paid her the debt which he owed her. The facts that the payment to Mrs. Sargent had the inevitable effect to deprive the creditors of the partnership of an opportunity which they would otherwise have had to collect their claims in whole or in part, and that Maxwell knew that this would be its effect, and hence must have intended that result, do not establish the fact that he intended to hinder, dela”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In re Julius Bros.