Rowan v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
219 F.2d 51 · 1955
Citation profile
72 federal appellate · 5 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 150 later decisions — most recently March 2006 · most notably Gooding Amusement Company, Incorporated v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, F. E. Gooding v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Anna Elizabeth Gooding v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, F. E. Gooding and Elizabeth Gooding v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1956), Estate of Mixon v. United States (1972)
72 federal appellate · 5 district · 2 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
Applies 26 U.S.C. § 23 · 28 U.S.C. § 1346 (Federal Tort Claims Act)
Relies on Gregory v. Helvering · Kennedy v. Silas Mason Co. · Commissioner v. Meridian & Thirteenth Realty Co. · Matthiessen v. Commissioner
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 150 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[n]o stockholder could safely advance money to strengthen the faltering steps of his corporation (which, of course, may be greatly to the benefit of other creditors) if he is faced with the danger of having the Commissioner, with the backing of the courts, say ‘he has no right to launch a corporate business without investing in it all the money it needed, and investing it in the way that is most disadvantageous to himself, both as relates to taxation and as to other creditors.’”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Recognizing fully that the Government is not bound in its tax collecting activities by the terminology used by taxpayers if such terminology is actually used to disguise something quite different, we nevertheless have seen no authority for the proposition that the stockholders of a corporation may not determine just how much of their funds they care to risk in the form of capital and how much, if any, they are willing to lend as a credit. If they make such a determination and it is clear that such is their intent, the fact that when they close up the venture and take their loss as to such amount as they have actually loaned the corporation, this leaves them in a position to enjoy more favorable deduction privileges than if they had put it all in as capital, this does not entitle the Commissioner of Internal Revenue to rewrite their balance sheet for them and show to be capital what was intended to be a loan.” ( 219 F.2d at 54 )”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“initial funds to start the corporate life.”
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.