Pepper v. Litton’s Empirical Analysis
308 U.S. 295 · 1939
Citation profile
1,330 federal appellate · 311 district · 344 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,321 later decisions (97 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably Securities and Exchange Commission v. Chenery Corporation (1943), Granfinanciera, S.A. v. Nordberg (1989)
1,330 federal appellate · 311 district · 344 state decisions — followed in 37 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
reviewedLitton v. Pepper (from Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Local Loan Co. v. Hunt · Isaacs v. Hobbs Tie & Timber Co. · Southern Pac Co v. Bogert · Taylor v. Standard Gas & Electric Co.
Cited together with Local Loan Co. v. Hunt · Taylor v. Standard Gas & Electric Co. · Heiser v. Woodruff · Sampsell v. Imperial Paper & Color Corp. · Securities & Exchange Commission v. United States Realty & Improvement Co.
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 5,321 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“to sift the circumstances surrounding any claim to see that injustice or unfairness is not done in administration of the bankrupt estate.”
226 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"[E]ven though the act provides that claims shall not be proved against a bankrupt estate subsequent to six months after the adjudication, the bankruptcy court in the exercise of its equitable jurisdiction has power to permit claims to be proved thereafter in order to prevent a fraud or an injustice."”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“No matter how technically legal each step in that scheme may have been, once its basic nature was uncovered it was the duty of the bankruptcy court in the exercise of its equity jurisdiction to undo it.”
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.