Surace v. Danna’s Empirical Analysis
1928
Citation profile
6 district · 103 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 155 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2012 · most notably Hawks v. Hamill (1933), Trotter v. State of Tennessee Blount County Tenn (1933)
6 district · 103 state decisions — followed in 15 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.
Relationships
Relies on New York Central Railroad Company v. Sarah White · Towne v. Eisner · International Stevedoring Co. v. Haverty · Smith v. . the People · McIntosh v. Aubrey
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 155 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We are blind to the policy of workmen’s compensation if we say that the purpose of the exemption, thus emphatically guarded, is to promote the convenience of the state by withdrawing the occasion for conflicting claims of ownership. There shines through the statute, both here and in related sections, a worthier conception of the duty of the state to the helpless and hapless in an industrial society. ... At the root of the exemption is something more benignant than bureaucratic formalism, a dislike of complicating documents. The exemption like the compensation is for the protection of the man. [Italics ours.] . . . “ ‘It is quite obvious,’ we said, ‘that such an exemption can produce no beneficial effect, unless it is extended beyond the letter of the act, and given life and force, according to its evident spirit and meaning.’ ””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“By concession the moneys due under the award would have been exempt from the pursuit of creditors before they reached the judgment debtor. The argument is, however, that they became subject to seizure the instant they were paid. If this is so, the exemption is next to futile .... [The funds] may be appropriated to the last dollar in satisfaction of an ancient debt. They will no longer be a fund for the support of the indigent and helpless. So narrow a construction thwarts the purpose of the statute.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“The exemption must have a meaning consistent with the policy behind it. Few words are so plain that the context or the occasion is without capacity to enlarge or narrow their extension. The thought behind the phrase proclaims itself misread when the outcome of the reading is injustice or absurdity ... Adherence to the letter will not be suffered to ‘defeat the general purpose and manifest policy intended to be promoted.’”
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.