Murphy Oil Co. v. Burnet’s Empirical Analysis
287 U.S. 299 · 1932
Citation profile
179 federal appellate · 20 district · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 383 later decisions (58 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2022 · most notably Helvering v. Hallock (1940), Palmer v. Bender (1933)
179 federal appellate · 20 district · 12 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedMurphy Oil Co. v. Burnet (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Burnet v. Harmel · Brewster v. Gage · National Lead Co. v. United States · Burnet v. Thompson Oil & Gas Co.
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 383 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We think it no longer open to doubt that when the execution of an oil and gas lease is followed by production of oil, the bonus and royalties paid to the lessor both involve at least some return of his capital investment in oil in the ground, for which a depletion allowance must be made under § 234. 'See Burnet v. Karmel, supra. This is obvious where royalties alone are insufficient to return the capital investment. A distinction between royalties and bonus, which would allow a depletion deduction on the former but tax the latter in full as income, when received, making no provision for a reasonably anticipated production of oil on the leased premises, would deny the “reasonable allowance for depletion” which the statute provides. ⅜ * *”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(a) Where a lessor receives a bonus in addition to royalties, there shall be allowed as a depletion deduction in respect of the bonus an amount equal to that proportion of the cost or value of the property on the basic date which the amount of the bonus bears to the sum of the bonus and the royalties expected to be received. Such allowance shall be deducted from the amount remaining to be recovered by the lessor through depletion, and the remainder is recoverable through depletion deductions on the basis of royalties thereafter received.[ 20 ]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a reasonable allowance for depletion and for depreciation of improvements according to the peculiar conditions in each case.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.