Avery v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis
292 U.S. 210 · 1934
Citation profile
137 federal appellate · 12 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 305 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2013 · most notably Clark v. Commissioner (1959), Putnam's Estate v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1945)
137 federal appellate · 12 district · 4 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Hadley v. Commissioner · Commissioner v. Adams · Commissioner v. Bingham · Shearman v. Commissioner
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 305 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[i]n the disclosed circumstances the dividends cannot properly be considered as cash or other property unqualifiedly subject to the petitioner’s demand on December 31st. It was the practice of the Company to pay all dividends by checks not intended to reach stockholders until the first business day of January; there is nothing to show that petitioner could have obtained payment on December 31st, he did not expect this and the practice shows the company had no intention to make actual payment on that day. Nothing indicates that it recognized an unrestricted right of stockholders to demand payment except through checks sent out in the usual way. The checks did not constitute payments prior to their actual receipt. The mere promise or obligation of the corporation to pay on a given date was not enough to subject to petitioner’s unqualified demand “cash or other property”; and none of the parties understood that it was.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“shall be included in the gross income of the distributees when the cash or other property is unqualifiedly made subject to their demands.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““If we give the words of the statutes their ordinary meaning, clearly the dividends under consideration were not actually received by the taxpayer during 1924 and 1929. Certainly they were not received when declared. They did not come into the taxpayer’s hands on December 31st simply because payable on that day. And, unless Congress has definitely indicated an intention that the words should be construed otherwise, we must apply them according to their usual acceptation.””
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.