19 Wash. 2d 748 - Goodwin v. Castleton’s Empirical Analysis
1944
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 25 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2009 · most notably Burks v. Lasker (1979), 109 Wash. 2d 107 - Haberman v. Washington Public Power Supply System (1988)
2 federal appellate · 13 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 Pacific Coast Steamship Company v. United States · Corbus v. Alaska Treadwell Gold Mining Co. · Karasik v. Pacific Eastern Corp. · Grant v. . Greene Consolidated Copper Company · Opportunity Christian Church v. Washington Water Power 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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘The mere fact that a corporation has a cause of action for an injury does not always make it incumbent upon it to sue, any more than in the case of an individual. If, in the opinion of the directors or a majority of the stockholders, the best interests of the company do not require it to sue, it need not do so. The matter ordinarily is within their discretion, and if they act in good faith, their refusal to sue violates no right of dissenting stockholders, so as to entitle them to maintain a suit in their own behalf. The exercise of such discretion by the directors will not be lightly set aside by the court, and where a stockholder complains of such action of the directors the court will consider the circumstances, and, if no bad faith is shown, will decline to substitute the judgment of the stockholder for that of the managing directors. * * *’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“it appears that the corporation is incapable of enforcing a right of action accruing to it or that its officers or directors are acting fraudulently or collusively among themselves or with others.”
1 later decision 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.