Old Dominion Copper Mining Smelting Company v. Frederick Lewisohn’s Empirical Analysis
210 U.S. 206 · 1908
Citation profile
57 federal appellate · 17 district · 96 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 190 later decisions (14 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2011 · most notably Caplin v. Marine Midland Grace Trust Co. of New York (1972), Bigelow v. Old Dominion Copper Mining & Smelting Co. (1912)
57 federal appellate · 17 district · 96 state decisions — followed in 23 states
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedOld Dominion Copper Mining & Smelting Co. v. Lewisohn (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Dickerman v. Northern Trust Co. · Wardell v. Railroad Co. · Donnell v. Herring-Hall-Marvin Safe Co. · Seymour v. Spring Forest Cemetery Ass'n
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 190 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“were on both sides of the bargain, and they might issue to themselves as much stock in their corporation as they liked in exchange for their conveyance of their land.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““If there was a wrong, it was when the innocent public subscribed. But what one would expect to find, if a wrong happened then, would not be that the sale became a breach of duty to the corporation nunc pro tunc, but that the invitation to the public without disclosure, when acted upon, became a- fraud upon the subscribers from an equitable point' of view, accompanied by what they might treat as damage. For it is only by virtué of the innocent subscribers’ position and the promoter’s invitation that the corporation has any pretense for a standing in court. If the promoters, after starting their scheme, had sold their stock before any subscriptions were taken, and then the purchasers of their stock, with notice, had invited the public to come in, and it did, we do not see how the company could maintain this suit. If it could not then, we do not see how it can now.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Of course, it is competent for legislators, but not, we think, for judges, except by a quasi legislative declaration, to establish that a corporation shall not be bound by its assent in a transaction of this kind, when the parties contemplate an invitation to the public to come in and join as original subscribers for any portion of the shares. It may be said that the corporation cannot be bound until the contemplated adverse interest is represented, or it may be said that promoters cannot strip themselves of the character of trustees until that moment. But it seems to us a strictly legislative determination. It is difficult, without inventing new and qualifying established doctrines, to go behind the fact that the corporation remains one and the same after once it really exists.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.