Coffman v. Breeze Corporations, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

88 federal appellate · 40 district · 18 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 316 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The only rights asserted as the basis for the relief sought by appellant are derived from the license agreements. Those agreements, so far as now appears and as we assume for present purposes, are contractual obligations to pay the stipulated royalties. As they accrue, the royalties become simple debts recoverable in an action at law, or possibly, where the accounts are complicated, in a proceeding for an accounting such as appellant has already begun in its separate suit pending in the District Court of New Jersey. Kirby v. Lake Shore & M. S. R. Co., 120 U.S. 130 , 7 S. Ct. 430 , 30 L.Ed. 569 ; United States v. Old Settlers, 148 U.S. 427, 465 , 13 S.Ct. 650, 655 , 37 L.Ed. 509 . “Appellant does not in the present suit bring to our attention any facts showing or tending to show that a suit to recover a money judgment for the royalties would not afford complete and adequate relief without resort to an equitable remedy. In such a suit if appellee Breeze is obligated by the contracts in question to pay the royalties to appellant, it can discharge that obligation only by payment of the amount due, or by setting up the Royalty Adjustment Act as a defense. Compliance with the duty under the Act to pay into the Treasury the royalties withheld from appellant would operate by the terms of the Act as a discharge of the obligation to pay appellant. If that defense were offered, the constitutional validity of these provisions of the Act would be a justiciable issue in the case, since up”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Aircraft & Diesel Equipment Corp. v. Hirsch

2. “Appellant asserts in the present suit no right to recover the royalties. It asks only a determination that the Royalty Adjustment Act is unconstitutional and, if so found, that compliance with the Act be enjoined.... If contested the validity of the Act would be an issue which, so far as it could ever become material, would properly arise only in a suit to recover the royalties, where it could be appropriately decided. In the circumstances disclosed by the record and for purposes of the present suit, the constitutionality of the Act is without legal significance and can involve no justiciable question unless and until appellant seeks recovery of the royalties, and then only if appellee relies on the Act as a defense. The prayer of the bill of complaint that the Act be declared unconstitutional is thus but a request for an advisory opinion as to the validity of a defense to a suit for recovery of the royalties____ The bill of complaint thus fails to disclose any ground for the determination of any question of law or fact which could be the basis of a judgment adjudicating the rights of the parties.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Galluzzo v. Champaign County Court of Common Pleas

3. “[Breeze] could have made such a defense but does not appear to have done so in the pending accounting suit and does not assert its validity here. The bill of complaint thus fails to disclose any ground for the determination of any question of law or fact which could be the basis of a judgment adjudicating the rights of the parties.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Columbian Financial Corp. v. Bancinsure, Inc.