Fox v. Edwards’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 federal appellate · 7 district ·

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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Section 252 of the act of 1918 has nothing whatever to do with the collector of internal revenue, or with an action against him. The power or duty to make refunds under the section is vested, not in the collector, but in the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. That Commissioner, prior to the enactment of section 252, had no authority to credit or refund overpayments of taxes unless appeal was duly made to him in the manner prescribed by section 3220 of the Revised Statutes which reads. * * * “And the appeal had to be made within two years after the cause of action accrued, as required by section 3228. That being the condition of the law, Congress enacted section 252 of the act of 1918. The primary purpose of that enactment was to permit the Commissioner of his own volition, upon discovery of any overpayment, to' credit or refund the same, notwithstanding the provisions of section 3228 of the Revised Statutes, and to limit the time within which he could make such credit or refund to ‘five years from the date the return was made.’ The section does not in express terms purport to give the taxpayer a right to sue for the recovery of the excess in the tax paid. It simply defines the powers and duties of the Commissioner in correcting overpayments which he finds have been made. It was intended to protect the Commissioner in making refunds which ought to be made, even though no claim for refund was filed, or though the two-year period for filing claims prescribed by section 3228 had ”

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

2. ““That eminent authority [Cooley] also points out that every man is supposed to know the law, and if he voluntarily makes a payment, which the law would not compel him to make, he cannot afterwards assign his ignorance of the law as a reason why the state should furnish him with legal remedies to recover it back. And he adds: ‘Especially is this the ease when the officer receiving the money, who is chargeable with no more knowledge of the law than the party making payment, is not put on his guard by any warning or protest, and the money is paid over to the use of the publie in apparent acquiescence in the justice of the exaction. Mistake of fact can scarcely exist in such a ease except in connection with negligence.; as the illegalities which render such a demand a nullity must appear from the records, and the taxpayer is just as much bound to inform himself what the records show, or do not show, as are the publie authorities. The rule of law is a rule of sound public policy also; it is a rule of quiet as well as of good faith, and precludes the courts being occupied in undoing the arrangements of parties which they have voluntarily made, and into which they have not been drawn by fraud or accident, or by any excusable ignorance of their legal rights and liabilities.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Warner v. Walsh