Guaranty Trust Co of New York v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
304 U.S. 126 · 1938
Citation profile
427 federal appellate · 170 district · 150 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,251 later decisions (50 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably United States v. Kubrick (1979), Societe Internationale Pour Participations Industrielles Et Commerciales, S. A. v. Rogers (1958)
427 federal appellate · 170 district · 150 state decisions — followed in 26 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedUnited States v. Guaranty Trust Co. (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Oetjen v. Central Leather Co. · Underhill v. Hernandez · United States v. California · United States v. Belmont
Cited together with United States v. Summerlin · United States v. Pink · Board of Com'rs of Jackson County Kan v. United States · United States v. Thompson · Banco Nacional De Cuba v. Sabbatino
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 1,251 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“that the sovereign is exempt from the consequences of its laches, and from the operation of statutes of limitations”
23 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“is a statute of repose, designed to protect the citizens from stale and vexatious claims, and to make an end to the possibility of litigation after the lapse of a reasonable time.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he proof demonstrates that the United States never acquired a right free of a pre-existing infirmity, the running of limitations against its assignor, which public policy does not forbid.”
7 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.