Texas New Orleans Railroad Company v. Sabine Tram Company’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

114 federal appellate · 44 district · 161 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 489 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The determining circumstance is that the shipment of the lumber to Sabine was but a step in its transportation to its real and ultimate destination in foreign countries. In other words, the essential character of the commerce, not its mere accidents, should determine. It was to supply the demand of foreign countries that the lumber was purchased, manufactured and shipped, and' to give it a various character by the steps in its transportation would be extremely artificial. Once admit the principle, and means will be afforded of evading the national control of foreign commerce from points in the interior of a state. There must be transshipment at the seaboard, and if that may be made the point of ultimate destination by the device of separate bills of lading the commerce will be given local character, though it be essentially foreign.””

   6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Missouri, K. & T. R. Co. v. Ashinger · Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Wood

2. ““The facts in the case at bar are different. The lumber was ordered, manufactured and shipped for export. And we say ‘shipped,’ for we regard it of no consequence that the Sabine Company had no concern or connection with it after it reached Sabine. ' Its relation to the shipment was a perfectly natural one and did not change the relation of the Powell Company to it, and make the lumber other than lumber purchased at Ruliff, and started from there in transportation to a foreign destination. The findings are explicit and circumstantial as to this. And the shipment was not an isolated one but typical of many others, which constituted a commerce amounting in the year 1905 to 14,667,670 feet-of lumber, and in the year 1906, 39,554,000 feet. Nor was there a break, in the sense of the interstate commerce law and the cited cases, in the continuity of the transportation of the lumber to foreign countries by the delay and its transhipment at Sabine.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Missouri, K. & T. Ry. Co. of Texas v. Pace

3. ““We have had occasion to express at what point of time a shipment of goods may be ascribed to interstate or foreign commerce and decided it to be when the goods have actually started for their destination in another state or to a foreign country, or delivered to a carrier for transportation. Coe v. Errol, 116 U. S. 517 [ 6 S. Ct. 475 , 29 L. Ed. 715 ]; Southern Pacific Terminal Co. v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 219 U. S. 498 , 527 [ 31 S. Ct. 279 , 55 L. Ed. 310 ].””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Missouri-Kansas-Texas R. Co. v. Northern Oklahoma Rys.