Seaman Field v. The United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

36 federal appellate · 4 district · 24 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 113 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[A]s the cause was by consent not tried by a jury, the exception to the admission of evidence was not properly the subject of a bill of exceptions. But if the District Court improperly admitted the evidence, the only effect would be, that this Court would reject that evidence, and proceed to decide the cause, as if it were not in the record. It would not, however, of itself, constitute any ground for a reversal of the judgment. * * * [Field v. United States, 34 U.S. (9 Pet.) 182, 202, 9 L.Ed. 94 (1834).]”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Oates v. United States · McDonald v. United States

2. ““The first objection now taken by the plaintiffs in error, is, that the order of the parish court, confirming the tableau of distribution, was the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction, in favor of each creditor whose debt was therein stated; and that the syndics were obliged to pay the proceeds of the sale to such creditors; and the United States not being named as creditors therein, can have no right to the fund against the other creditors. If, at the time of the confirmation of this tableau of distribution, no debts due to the United States had been known to the syndics, and they had, in ignorance thereof, made a distribution of the whole funds among the other creditors, that might have raised a very different question. But in point of fact, it has not been denied that the syndics, long before that period, had notice of the existence of the debts due to the United States; and the present suit was commenced against them in the preceding March. The United States were, it is true, not parties to the proceedings in the parish court, nor were they bound to appear and become parties therein. The local laws of the state could not, and did not, bind them in their rights. They could not create a priority in favor of other creditors, in cases of insolvency, which should supersede that of the United States. The priority of the latter attached by the laws of the United States, in virtue of the assignment and notice to the syndics of their debts. And it was the duty of the synd”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. American Surety Co. v. Schramm

3. “"In the course of this opinion whatever obiter dicta I may have expressed arguendo, I wish to be explicitly understood as affirming the law to be that, whatever legal liens may have been attached to the property of the debtor of the United States prior to his insolvency, whether they arise from mortgages, judgments, or from the operation of State laws (if properly set forth and pleaded), so far devests the debtor of his property, pro tanto, as to exempt it from the claim of the United States. "It is to the unincumbered estate of the insolvent, devested of any pre-existing lien, that they must look for priority of payment, for, having no lien themselves on their debtor's property while it is under his own control, they cannot reach it in the hands of others, who have an implied right to it in the case of the nonpayment of the debt for which it is security ..."”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 129 Ind. App. 433 - Muniz Etc. v. United States