Perkins v. Thompson’s Empirical Analysis
1825
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently May 1922
1 federal appellate · 12 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.
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is apprehended, that the soundest policy forbids, that any person should be the purchaser of that which he is appointed to sell. The characters of vendor and purchaser of the same article, at the same time, are inconsistent, and cannot be united in the same person. As sheriff, this defendant was bound by his duty, in relation to the debtor and creditor, to procure the best price he could for the horse; but the moment he employed an agent to bid off the horse for himself, it became his interest to act in direct opposition to his duty. It never can be fit or proper to permit a sheriff to put himself in this situation. It is a situation neither safe to himself, nor to the debtor and creditor. Our statute makes it the duty of coroners to serve all writs and processes, where the sheriff is a party. 1 N. H. Laws 160. This provision is founded upon the manifest impropriety of calling upon, or permitting, the sheriff to act officially in a situation, where his interest might impel him to go counter to his duty. If then the law will not permit a sheriff to serve his own writ, even by simply leaving a summons with the defendant, with what consistency can it be decided that a sheriff may be intrusted to sell goods upon an execution, where it is his duty to procure the best price he can, after he has employed an agent to purchase them, and has become interested in having them purchased as cheaply as may be? It is very possible, that a sheriff might sell an article for the full value,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Miller v. Winslow
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.