Butler Bros. v. McColgan, Franchise Tax Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis
315 U.S. 501 · 1942
Citation profile
24 federal appellate · 438 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 531 later decisions (50 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2018 · most notably Container Corp. of America v. Franchise Tax Board (1983), Mobil Oil Corp. v. Commissioner of Taxes of Vt. (1980)
24 federal appellate · 438 state decisions — followed in 40 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.
Relationships
Relies on Underwood Typewriter Co. v. Chamberlain · Hans Rees' Sons v. State of North Carolina Maxwell · Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Grosjean · Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton, Ltd. v. State Tax Commission
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 531 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“One who attacks a formula of apportionment carries a distinct burden of showing by `clear and cogent evidence' that it results in extraterritorial values being taxed.”
17 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““As stated in Hans Rees’ Sons v. North Carolina, supra, p. 133, ‘. . . the enterprise of a corporation which manufactures and sells its manufactured product is ordinarily a unitary business, and all the factors in that enterprise are essential to the realization of profits.’ And see Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton, Ltd. v. Tax Commission, supra, p. 282. By the same token, California may properly treat appellant’s business as a unitary one. Cf. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Grosjean, 301 U. S. 412 . There is unity of ownership and management. And the operation of the central buying division alone demonstrates that functionally the various branches are closely integrated. Admittedly, centralized purchasing results in more favorable prices being obtained than if the purchases were separately made for the account of any one branch.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“We cannot say that property, pay roll, and sales are inappropriate ingredients of an apportionment formula. We agree with the Supreme Court of California that these factors may properly be deemed to reflect 'the relative contribution of the activities in the various states to the production of the total unitary income,' so as to allocate to California its just proportion of the profits earned by appellant from this unitary business. And no showing has been made that income unconnected with the unitary business has been used in the formula.”
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.