Stearns Co of Boston Mass v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
291 U.S. 54 · 1934
Citation profile
322 federal appellate · 42 district · 59 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 838 later decisions (8 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2024 · most notably Stone v. White (1937), Novella v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co. (1972)
322 federal appellate · 42 district · 59 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 Florsheim Bros. Drygoods Co. v. United States · Stange v. United States · Bonwit Teller & Co. v. United States · The President Directors and Company of the Bank of the United States v. Dandridge
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 838 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The applicable principle is fundamental and unquestioned. “He who prevents a thing from being done may not avail himself of the nonperformance which he has himself occasioned, for the law says to him, in effect: ‘This is your own act, and therefore you are not damnified.’ ” Sometimes the resulting disability has been characterized as an estoppel, sometimes as a waiver. The label counts for little. Enough for present purposes that the disability has its roots in a principle more nearly ultimate than either waiver or estoppel, the principle that no one shall be permitted to found any claim upon his own inequity or take advantage of his own wrong.”
25 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a]cts done by a public officer which presuppose the existence of other acts to make them legally operative, are presumptive proofs of the latter.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Green v. Byrd · In Re OM““A balance must have been struck in such circumstances as to import a promise of payment on the one side and acceptance on the other.””
3 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.