James Shewan & Sons, Inc. v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

30 federal appellate · 18 district · 1 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 86 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““S 195. Actions Based on Personal Lia-( bility. “The Acts anthorize suit where, if the government vessel were privately owned or operated or the cargo privately owned or possessed, ‘a proceeding in admiralty could be maintained at the time of the commencement of the action’ provided for in the Acts. The Acts do not say ‘where a libel in rem could be maintained’ but read ‘a proceeding in admiralty’, a generic term embracing in its natural connotation actions in rem and actions in personam both of which were separately specified in the original draft for which the final form has substituted a single but inclusive phrase. Equally clear is the implication of the provision that election to proceed upon the principles of libels in rem shall not preclude the libelant in any proper case from seeking relief in personam in the same suit. In safeguarding the right to relief in personam when conjoined with a claim on the principles of actions in rem, this clause necessarily contemplates that the right which such election is not to prejudice exists independently of that election. The provision that the United States shall be entitled to the benefits of all exemptions and of all limitations of liability accorded by law to owners, etc., contemplates actions asserting a personal liability. The provision that suits shall proceed and shall be heard and determined according to the principles of law and to the rules of practice obtaining in like cases between private parties and the further prov”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Eastern Transportation Co. v. United States · Olavarria & Co. v. United States

2. ““Obviously under the act of 1916, liability to suit of a vessel owned or controlled by the United States as a merchant véssel depended primarily not upon the time when the suit was to be brought and the vessel was to be seized, but upon her character as one solely engaged in merchant service when the transaction occurred out of which the liability grew.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Olavarria & Co. v. United States · Eastern S. S. Lines, Inc. v. United States

3. ““We do not find anything in the act of 1916 which would prevent its liberal construction to enable one who had repaired a vessel engaged solely as a merchant vessel for the United States from proceeding against that vessel in rem under the act of 1916, even though after the repairs had been made upon her as a commercial vessel, she was subsequently laid up, if she had not then acquired character as a public vessel. So we do not think that the decision in the Lake Monroe case (In re United States) 250 U.S. 246 , 39 S.Ct. 460 , 63 L.Ed. 962 , would have been different had she thus been laid up after she had injured the libelant’s vessel in that case.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Olavarria & Co. v. United States