Clarkson v. Clarkson’s Empirical Analysis
1855
Citation profile
14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 1934
14 state decisions
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.
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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“I am not satisfied with these decisions, and there is no sound principle upon which they can be upheld. “ I am satisfied that these decisions will never be followed in this country, and will be repudiated, if they are not already, in England. . . . The stock payment of 60 per cent made upon this investment was properly dividends, extraordinary in amounts, not in manner of payment, that being a matter of policy with the company. ‘Dividends,’ as used in the will, is unqualified. It includes, in its technical sense as well as in its ordinary and common acceptation, all distributions to corporators of the profits of the corporation, ivhether such distributions are large or small, or whether made at long or short intervals, and without any regard to the manner or place of their declaration or mode of payment. . . . The 60 per cent stock dividend, made December 30th, 1850, belonged to the tenants for life, and the trustees must be decreed to deliver over to them the said stock or its substitute and all income, dividend, or increase received thereon, or pay the value thereof.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Gibbons v. Mahon“It is settled that any extraordinary bonus or addition to the usual annual income of stock or other property, which is settled in trust for one for life with remainder over, must be treated as capital and added to the principal fund. The trustees, therefore, will not be justified in paying over these unusual additions to the beneficial tenant for life, but they must invest them for the benefit of all parties.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Gibbons v. Mahon
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.