Life Casualty Ins Co of Tennessee v. McCray’s Empirical Analysis
291 U.S. 566 · 1934
Citation profile
35 federal appellate · 23 district · 62 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 162 later decisions (12 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2006 · most notably 472 So. 2d 1145 - Florida Patient's Compensation Fund v. Rowe (1985), Bankers Life & Casualty Co. v. Crenshaw (1988)
35 federal appellate · 23 district · 62 state decisions — followed in 14 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 Ex Parte: Edward T Young · Huntington v. Attrill · Nash v. United States · Dohany v. Rogers · Ownbey v. Morgan
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 162 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The Fourteenth Amendment does not prohibit the award of an attorney’s fee, moderate in amount, when payment of a policy of life insurance has been wrongfully refused. “We assume in accordance with the assumption of the court below that payment was resisted in good faith and upon reasonable grounds. Even so, the unsuccessful defendant must pay the adversary’s costs, and costs in the discretion of the lawmakers may include the fees of an attorney. There are systems of procedure neither arbitrary nor unenlightened, and of a stock akin to ours, in which submission to such a burden is the normal lot of the defeated litigant, whether plaintiff or defendant. The taxing master in the English courts may allow the charges of the barrister as well as the fees of the solicitor. Nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment forbids a like procedure here. * * * Nor is there an unjust discrimination, an arbitrary denial of the equal protection of the laws, in laying the burden on insurers and not on all defendants. Diversity of treatment in respect of the costs of litigation has its origin and warrant in diversity of social needs. Dohany v. Rogers [ 281 U.S. 362 , 50 S.Ct. 299 , 74 L.Ed. 904 , 68 A.L.R. 434 ]. Dependents left without a breadwinner will be exposed to sore distress if life insurance payments are extracted slowly and painfully, after costly contests in the courts. Health and accident insurance will often be the sources from which the sick and the disabled are to meet their weekly bills”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The law is full of instances where a man's fate depends on his estimating rightly, that is, as the jury subsequently estimates it, some matter of degree.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“one who refuses to pay when the law requires that he shall, acts at his peril, in the sense that he must be held to the acceptance of any lawful consequences attached to the refusal____ The price of error may be so heavy as to erect an unfair barrier against the endeavor of an honest litigant to obtain the judgment of the court. In that event, the Constitution intervenes and keeps the courtroom open____ On the other hand, the penalty may be no more than the fair price of the adventure____ In that event, the litigant must pay for his experience, like others who have tried and lost.”
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.