Walker v. Wilkinson’s Empirical Analysis
296 F. 850 · 1924
Citation profile
35 federal appellate · 3 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 62 later decisions — most recently January 2013 · most notably Mack v. Newton (1984), Thomas W. Garland, Inc. v. Union Electric Co. (In Re Thomas W. Garland, Inc.) (1982)
35 federal appellate · 3 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.
Relationships
Relies on Kaufman v. Tredway · Mechanics' & Metals National Bank v. Ernst
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 62 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It has been decided that, in an action by a trustee to recover money paid a creditor by way of preference, the creditor cannot set off against his liability for the return of the preferential payments the original debt on which the payments were applied. Rotan Grocery Co. v. West, 246 Fed. 685 , 158 C.C.A. 641 ; Mechanics’ Bank v. Ernst, 231 U.S. 60 , 34 Sup.Ct. 22 , 58 L.Ed. 121 . The reason is, to permit this to be done would defeat the right to recover the preference, and render the statute futile. In such a case the transaction is single, and results in a depletion of the fund that would otherwise have gone to creditors to the extent of the preferential payments. Allowing the creditor to set off the debt due him against the payments received by him would leave the preference unremedied. In this class of cases, the right to offset is denied, because the estate has been depleted to the detriment of creditors of like class, and to allow the right of set-off would perpetuate the depletion.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he transfer or payment must be one that diminishes the fund to which creditors of the same class can legally resort for the payment of their debts, and to an extent that makes it impossible for such other creditors to obtain as great a percentage as the favored one, in order that the transaction constitute a preference.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“to obtain a greater percentage of his debt than some other creditor of the same class.”
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.