Lightfoot v. . Davis’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 federal appellate · 86 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 122 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is insisted by the counsel for the defendants that the doctrine which subjects property acquired by the fraudulent: misuse of trust moneys by a trustee to the influence of the trust, and converts it into trust property and the wrongdoer into a trustee at the election of the beneficiary, has no application to a case where money or property acquired by felony has been converted into other property. There is, it is said, in such cases, no trust relation between the owner of the stolen property and the thief, and the law will not imply one for the purpose of subjecting the avails of the stolen property to the claim of the owner. It would seem to be an anomaly in the law, if the owner who has been deprived of his property by a larceny should be less favorably situated in a court of equity, in respect to his remedy to recover it, or the property into which it had been converted, than one who, by an abuse of trust, has been injured by the wrongful act of a trustee to whom the possession of trust property has been confided. The law in such a case will raise a trust in invirum out of the transaction, for the very purpose of subjecting the substituted property to the purposes of indemnity and recompense. ‘One of the most common cases,’ remarks Judge Story, in which a court of equity acts upon the ground of implied trusts in invitum, is when a party receives money which he cannot conscientiously withhold from another party.’ Sto. Eq. Juris. § 1255. And he states it to be a general p”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Pioneer Mining Co. v. Tyberg

2. ““Where a person obtains possession of property secretly by a common-law larceny and conceals that possession, no lapse of time ' should confer title on the thief. The contrary doctrine seems to me shocking both in morals and to common sense.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commercial Union Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Connolly

3. ““The method by which equity proceeds in all these cases is to turn the wrongdoer into a trustee.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Pioneer Mining Co. v. Tyberg