Massey Motors, Inc. v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
201 federal appellate · 20 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 497 later decisions (20 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2002 · most notably Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Idaho Power Company (1974), Fribourg Navigation Company v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1966)
201 federal appellate · 20 district · 7 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
reviewedUnited States v. Massey Motors, Inc. (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 26 U.S.C. § 117 · 26 U.S.C. § 23
Relies on Higgins v. Commissioner · United States v. Ludey · Helvering v. R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. · Detroit Edison Co. v. Commissioner
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 497 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“it is the primary purpose of depreciation accounting to further the integrity of periodic income statements by making a meaningful allocation of the cost entailed in the use ... of the asset to the periods to which it contributes”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the useful life of the asset be related to the period for which it may reasonably be expected to be employed in the taxpayer's business”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Congress intended by the depreciation allowance not to make taxpayers a profit thereby, but merely to protect them from a loss.... Accuracy in accounting requires that correct tabulations, not artificial ones, be used.”
5 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.