Helvering v. Hammel’s Empirical Analysis
311 U.S. 504 · 1941
Citation profile
242 federal appellate · 18 district · 17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 595 later decisions (42 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2019 · most notably Roadway Express, Inc. v. Piper (1980), Griffin v. Oceanic Contractors, Inc. (1982)
242 federal appellate · 18 district · 17 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
reviewedCommissioner v. Hammel (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Burnet v. Harmel · United States v. Phellis · White v. United States · Haggar Co. v. Helvering
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 595 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(a) Allowance of deduction. A loss incurred in a business or in a transaction entered into for profit and arising from the sudden termination of the usefulness in such business or transaction of any nondepreciable property, in a case where such business or transaction is discontinued or where such property is permanently discarded from use therein, shall be allowed as a deduction under section 165(a) for the taxable year in which the loss is actually sustained. For this purpose, the taxable year in which the loss is sustained is not necessarily the taxable year in which the overt act of abandonment, or the loss of title to the property, occurs. (b) Exceptions. This section does not apply to losses sustained upon the sale or exchange of property, losses sustained upon the obsolescence or worthlessness of depreciable property, casualty losses, or losses reflected in inventories required to be taken from section 471. The limitations contained in sections 1211 and 1212 upon losses from the sale or exchange of capital assets do not apply to losses allowable under this section.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[I]n interpreting a statute, [a court has] 'some scope for adopting a restricted rather than a literal or usual meaning of its words where acceptance of that meaning would lead to absurd results ... or would thwart the obvious purpose of the statute.' But it is otherwise 'where no such consequences [would] follow and where ... it appears to be consonant with the purposes of the Act.'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Losses from sales or exchanges of capital assets shall be allowed only to the extent of $2,000 plus the gains from such sales or exchanges.”
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.