United States v. Towery’s Empirical Analysis
306 U.S. 324 · 1939
Citation profile
59 federal appellate · 9 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 94 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 1983 · most notably Spiegel's Estate v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1949), Peak v. United States (1957)
59 federal appellate · 9 district ·
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
reviewedTowery v. United States (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Lynch v. United States · White v. United States · United States v. Worley · McCullough v. Smith
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 94 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ * * * no suit on United States Government life (converted) insurance shall be allowed under this section unless the same shall have been brought within six years after the right accrued for which the claim is made: Provided, That for the purposes of this section it shall be deemed that the right accrued on the happening of the contingency on which the claim is founded: Provided further, That this limitation is suspended for the period elapsing between the filing in the Veterans’ Administration of the claim sued upon and the denial of said claim by the Administrator of Veterans’ Affairs. * * * ””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The construction adopted by the court below would permit the bringing of suits even twenty years after the disability occurred. It is obvious that each year ascertainment of the essential facts which conditioned liability would become more difficult. We think then that, reasonably construed, the section provides that there shall be but one right,— that is, the right to benefit payments, and but one critical contingency which conditions that right, namely, the occurrence of permanent total disability or death while the policy remains in force.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[What] Congress intended by “the contingency on which the claim is founded” was the contingency on which liability under the policy was bottomed, namely, — permanent disability or death while the policy remained in force.”
1 later decision 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.