Fox v. Swartz’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently February 1991
8 federal appellate · 14 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
Relies on Daniel Holden v. J a Stratton · Commonwealth v. Metropolitan Life Insurance · Bailey v. Wood · Murphy v. Casey · 9 F. Supp. 223 - Carroll v. Equitable Life Assur. Soc. of United States
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“What plaintiff wholly overlooks is that, in the absence of the exercise by the insured of his option to take the cash-surrender value and dividends of a policy that has not matured, there is no debt due and payable by the insurer to the insured, and that the right of the insured to create such a debt by the exercise of the option is not an asset available to creditors, but is a right purely personal to the insured alone. An option of this nature has been aptly described as an irrevocable offer made to the insured by the insurer, but in no way binding upon the insurer until acceptance be had.... As a general rule, a policy is not to be regarded as liable to seizure under any form of judicial process against the insured so long as the duty of the insurer to pay is subject to any contingency or to any condition precedent.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““If we were to hold that the cash-surrender option of the insured, or any other option of the insured under the policy prior to its maturity, is a property right which is not exempt, but is available to the insured’s creditors, the protective benefits would be wiped out, and we would thereby defeat the statutory purpose.” (emphasis added)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“rather in the nature of a preference which is given to the beneficiary over the creditors of the debtor insured”
1 later decision 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.