Fidelity Union Trust Co. v. Field’s Empirical Analysis
311 U.S. 169 · 1940
Citation profile
362 federal appellate · 154 district · 25 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 931 later decisions (35 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2026 · most notably Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Estate J Bosch Second National Bank of New Haven (1967), West v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1940)
362 federal appellate · 154 district · 25 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedField v. Fidelity Union Trust Co. (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Erie Co v. Tompkins · West v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co. · Ruhlin v. New York Life Insurance · Erie Co v. Hilt
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 931 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“An intermediate state court in declaring and applying the state law is acting as an organ of the State and its determination, in the absence of more convincing evidence of what the state law is, should be followed by a federal court in deciding a state question.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““When a deposit has been or shall be made in a bank, savings bank or trust company by a person in trust for another, and no other or further notice of the existence and terms of a legal and valid trust has been given in writing to the bank, savings bank or trust company, in the event of the death of the trustee, the same or any part thereof, together with the dividends or interest thereon, shall be paid to the person in trust for whom the deposit was made, or to his legal representative and the legal representative of the deceased trustee shall not be entitled to the funds so deposited nor to the dividends or interest thereon notwithstanding that the funds so deposited may have been the property of the trustee. * * *»”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“it is still the duty of the federal courts, where the state law supplies the rule of decision, to ascertain and apply that law even though it has not been expounded by the highest court of the State.”
2 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.