Grigsby v. Russell’s Empirical Analysis
222 U.S. 149 · 1911
Citation profile
93 federal appellate · 35 district · 112 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 314 later decisions (17 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2022 · most notably Griffin v. McCoach (1941), Richmond Screw Anchor Co. v. United States (1928)
93 federal appellate · 35 district · 112 state decisions — followed in 29 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
reviewedRussell v. Grigsby (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Insurance Company v. Norton · New York Mutual Life Insurance v. Armstrong · Insurance Company v. Bailey · Warnock v. Davis · Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance v. Schaefer
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 314 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““So far as reasonable safety permits, it is desirable to give to life policies the ordinary characteristics of property. This is recognized by Bankruptcy Law, § 70, which provides that, unless the cash surrender value of a policy like the one before us is secured to the trustee within thirty days after it has been stated, the policy shall pass to the trustee as assets. Of course the trustee may have no interest in the bankrupt’s life. To deny the right to sell, except to persons having such an interest, is to diminish appreciably the value of the contract in the owner’s hands.””
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“A contract of insurance upon a life in which the insured has no interest is a pure wager that gives the insured a sinister counter interest in having the life come to an end.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The holder of a valid policy of insurance upon his own life may make a valid assignment of the policy to a person having no insurable interest in the life of the insured, in consideration of a sum of money and an undertaking to pay the premiums due and to become due, and the assignee takes the entire interest in the policy, as against the personal representatives of the insured.””
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.