National Safe Deposit, Savings & Trust Co. v. Hibbs’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

66 federal appellate · 21 district · 89 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 214 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “'where one of two innocent persons must suffer by the acts of a third, he who has enabled such third person to occasion the loss must sustain it,'”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Indemnity Insurance Co. of North America v. American Deseret Ltd. Partnership · Henry v. Auchincloss, Parker & Redpath

2. ““. . . In Scollans v. Rollins [ 179 Mass. 346 , 60 N. E. 983 ] it is admitted that the general principle there laid down would not apply to an instrument indorsed in blank and stolen before it had been transferred. We shall not examine the premises of this defense because we can not accept the conclusion. The qualification of the rule, as not applying when the instrument is stolen, is not based upon the name of the agent’s crime but upon the fact that in the ordinary and typical case of theft the owner has not intrusted the agent with the document and therefore is not considered to have done enough to be estopped as against a purchaser in good faith. He certainly has not done enough if the estoppel is based upon the principle that when one of two innocent persons is to suffer the sufferer should be the one whose confidence put into the hands of the wrongdoer the means of doing the wrong. But in a case like the present the agent has been intrusted with the converted property, and it is totally immaterial whether, by a stretch which extends larceny beyond the true field of trespass, his wrong has been brought within the criminal law or not. The ground of the estoppel is present and the estoppel arises. “The distinction is not new. On the one side are cases like Knox v. Eden Musee Americain Co., 148 N. Y. 441 , where an agent or servant simply had access to a document remaining in the possession of the owner; on the other, cases like Pennsylvania Railroad’s Appeal, 86 Penn. St. ”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Commercial Finance Corp. v. Burke · Powers v. Pacific Diesel Engine Co.

3. “, “In such case we think the principles which underlie equitable estoppel place the loss upon him whose misplaced confidence has made the wrong possible.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Santa Marina Co. v. Canadian Bank of Commerce · Commercial Finance Corp. v. Burke