Stark v. Bauer Cooperage Co.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 4 state decisions

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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““An impecunious but optimistic speculator, who finds a property for sale at such a bargain price that he sees a profit of 200 per cent if he could buy it and hold it awhile, hurries to a moneyed friend, explains the situation, and says, ‘If you will buy this from the present owner, and then sell it to me on five years’ credit, I will buy it of you at an advance of one third over what you pay, and make my interest-bearing purchase contract and notes for that total sum.’ The friend agrees, and it is done. Later the buyer concludes that the transaction was a usurious loan to him. ‘ ‘ So far as we can find, every ease in which the existence of an absolute promise by an ostensible vendee to pay the sum involved has been thought to indicate that the transaction was merely a loan instead of having the character in which it was made to appear is a ease where the contract vendee had parted with his recent title and was arranging to get it back again. In no ease was the contract one for the purchase of property which he had never theretofore owned. In this class are the numerous cases in which it appeared that the owner, perhaps of real estate or perhaps of the accounts receivable in a going business, was hard pressed for funds to save or to benefit his property, and thereupon went through more or less complete forms of selling his property to another and simultaneously agreed to buy it back at an advanced price. It is not important whether the papers show on their face that this agree”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Batchelor v. Mandigo

2. ““We do not share the apprehension of Bauer’s counsel and of the court below that, if this contract stands as written, a highway is pointed out to evade the beneficent purpose of the usury law. That purpose is to protect the necessitous debtor against extortion which he is practically helpless to resist. To adapt the usury laws to any other purpose is to distort them; and to carry them beyond their self-declared limits, through some vague thought of their spirit, is to take undue liberty. They select the rate with no regard to specific benefits or burdens, and they select their beneficiary by using the word ‘loan.’ The owner of a valuable equity who deeds it and takes back an optional right to redeem in one year at a 20 per cent, profit is, practically, more oppressed and under a greater pressure to pay than if he gave his absolute but unenforceable promise to redeem a doubtful equity at 10 per cent, interest; yet the latter is usury * * * and the former is not; and the reason it is not is because there is no loan. So, we think that when the capitalist and speculator have no existing relations and the speculator has no interest in a property for sale, the agreement that the capitalist will buy the property and carry it for the other and that the speculator will buy it from him at a fixed price is not, ipso facto, a loan.” 3 F.2d at 219 .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Meridian Bowling Lanes, Inc. v. Brown