Bank v. Atkinson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 1 district · 28 state decisions

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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ * *. > * It is not denied, as a general proposition, that if a clearly valid, subsisting debt is established by a wife against her husband he may pay it or prefer it in the. conveyance of his property. But, where a husband becomes insolvent, the wife cannot convert into debts, as against his creditors, former deliveries of her money or other property to him, or permitted receipts by him of her income or proceeds of her separate estate,, which at the time of such delivery or receipt were merely gifts intended by the wife to assist her husband in his business, or to pay their common expenses of living; and, considering the relation between them, the law does not,, merely from such delivery or receipt, imply a promise on the part of the husband to repay or replace the same, as it would between parties not so related; but it requires more — there must be either an express promise, or circumstances attending the transaction to establish the fact that they dealt with each other as debtor and creditor. It would be exceedingly dangerous to permit the wife, after she has allowed her husband to use and expend her means for the common benefit of themselves and their children, without any expectation of any return, or the creation of a debt, when by mismanagement or misfortune of the husband he becomes unable to pay his debts, to raise up these gifts, and convert them into loans to the prejudice of creditors, and support them by their own evidence, after they had trusted the husband”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Teter v. Viquesney