Sprage v. Ticonic Nat Bank’s Empirical Analysis
307 U.S. 161 · 1939
Citation profile
1,061 federal appellate · 262 district · 512 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,919 later decisions (88 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1971), Alyeska Pipeline Service Company v. Wilderness Society (1975)
1,061 federal appellate · 262 district · 512 state decisions — followed in 43 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
reviewedSprague v. Ticonic Nat. Bank (from First Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Trustees v. Greenough · In re Sanford Fork & Tool Co. · Central Railroad Banking Co of Georgia v. Pettus · Payne v. Hook
Cited together with Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co. · Alyeska Pipeline Service Company v. Wilderness Society · Trustees v. Greenough · Hall v. Cole · Central Railroad Banking Co of Georgia v. Pettus
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 2,919 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“is part of the original authority of the chancellor to do equity in a particular situation,”
60 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[w]hile a mandate is controlling as to matters within its compass, on the remand a lower court is free as to other issues.”
18 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Allowances of such costs in appropriate situations is part of the * * * equity jurisdiction of the federal courts. The suits `in equity' of which these courts were given `cognizance' ever since the First Judiciary Act, 1 Stat. 73, constituted that body of remedies, procedures and practices which theretofore had been evolved in the English Court of Chancery, 1 subject, of course, to modifications by Congress, e. g., Michaelson v. United States, 266 U.S. 42 , 45 S.Ct. 18, 69 L.Ed. 162, 35 A.L.R. 451. The sources bearing on eighteenth century English practice — reports and manuals — uniformly support the power not only to give a fixed allowance for the various steps in a suit, what are known as costs `between party and party,' but also as much of the entire expenses of the litigation of one of the parties as fair justice to the other party will permit, technically known as costs `as between solicitor and client. 2 '”
12 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.