State v. Swift & Co.’s Empirical Analysis
1945
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 36 later decisions — most recently March 1998 · most notably Lucas v. Texas Industries, Inc. (1984), Bell Oil & Gas Co. v. Allied Chemical Corp. (1968)
2 federal appellate · 26 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.
Relationships
Relies on Cannon Mfg Co v. Cudahy Packing Co · Chicago St Ry Co v. Minneapolis Civic & Commerce Ass'n · Smith v. Illinois Bell Telephone Co. · Berkey v. Third Avenue Railway Co. · United States v. Reading Co.
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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[C]ourts will not because of stock ownership or interlocking directorship disregard the separate legal identities of corporations, unless such relationship is used to defeat public convenience, justify wrongs, ... protect fraud, or defend crime.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage““ * * * the general rule is that the separate corporate entity of corporations will be observed by the courts, even though one may dominate or control another, or may treat it as a mere department, instrumentality, agency, etc.; and courts will disregard the separate legal identities of the corporations only when one is used to defeat public convenience, justify wrongs, protect fraud or crime of the other (Citing cases). These cases discuss at length proper methods or standards of handling relations between a parent and a subsidiary corporation so as to prevent their separate corporate identities from being disregarded by the courts. After reviewing particularly the Berkey case, Mr. Justice Douglas, before going on the bench, wrote an article for 39 Yale L.J. 193 , in which such methods or standards are summarized as follows: ‘The observance of the following four standards will keep the business units from being treated as assimilated: (1) A separate financial unit should be set up and maintained. That unit should be sufficiently financed so as to carry the normal strains upon it. The risks attendant on the conduct of a business of that type can roughly be averaged and that average met. (2) The day to day business of the two units should be kept separate. Normally each process can be tagged so as to identify it with the activity of one unit or with that of the other. Occasionally such tagging will be difficult in a case where the two businesses are merely units in a line of p”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“The whole problem of the relation between parent and subsidiary corporations is one that is still enveloped in the mist of metaphor. Metaphors in law are to be narrowly watched, for starting as devices to liberate thought, they end often by enslaving it. We say at times that the corporate entity will be ignored when the parent corporation operates a business through a subsidiary which is characterized as an 'alias' or a 'dummy'. All this is well enough if the picturesqueness of the epithets does not lead us to forget that the essential term to be defined is the act of operation. Dominion may be so complete, interference so obtrusive, that by the general rules of agency the parent will be a principal and the subsidiary an agent. Where control is less than this, we are remitted to the test of honesty and justice....”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.