Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Co. v. Rothensies’s Empirical Analysis
324 U.S. 108 · 1945
Citation profile
81 federal appellate · 4 district · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 216 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2020 · most notably Spiegel's Estate v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1949), Spiegel's Estate v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1949)
81 federal appellate · 4 district · 26 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
reviewedFidelity-Philadelphia Trust Co. v. Rothensies (from Third Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Helvering v. Hallock · Reinecke v. Northern Trust Co. · May v. Heiner · Klein v. United States · Helvering v. St. Louis Union Trust Co.
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 216 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“No more should the measure of the tax depend upon conjectures as to the propinquity or certainty of the decedent's reversionary interests. It is enough if he retains some contingent interest in the property until his death or thereafter, delaying until then the ripening of full dominion over the property by the beneficiaries. The value of the property subject to the contingency, rather than the actuarial or theoretical value of the possibility of the occurrence of the contingency, is the measure of the tax.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Art. 17. Transfers conditioned upon survivorship. “The statutory phrase, ‘a transfer * * intended to take effect in possession or enjoyment at or after his death,’ includes a transfer by the decedent (other than a ■bona fide sale for an adequate and full consideration in money or money’s worth) whereby and to the extent that the beneficial title to the property (if the transfer was in trust), or the legal title thereto (if the transfer was otherwise than in trust), remained in the decedent at the time of his death and the passing thereof was subject to the condition precedent of his death. If the tax .applies, it does so without regard to the time of the transfer, whether before or after the enactment of the Revenue Act of 1916. “On the other hand, if, as a result of the transfer, there remained in the decedent at the time of his death no title or interest in the transferred property, then no part of the property is to be included in the gi’oss estate merely by reason of a provision in the instrument of transfer to the effect that the property was to revert to the decedent upon the predecease of some other person or persons or the happening of some other event.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“intended to take effect in possession or enjoyment [only] at or after such [the grantor's] death.”
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.