Williams v. McKay’s Empirical Analysis
1885
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 1966 · most notably Briggs v. Spaulding (1891), Bovay v. H. M. Byllesby & Co. (1944)
4 federal appellate · 21 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.
Relationships
Relies on Hun v. . Cary
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“I entirely repudiate the notion that this board of managers could leave the entire affairs of this bank to certain committee-men, and then, when disaster to the innocent and helpless cestui que trustent ensued, stifle all complaints of their neglects by saying, we did not do these things, and we know nothing about them. . . . The misconduct in question was manifested in frequent, glaring instances, and it is not easy to imagine how they, or some of them, failed to be discovered by these boards of managers, on the supposition which, in their favor, the law will make, that they exercised their office in this respect with a reasonable degree of vigilance. The neglectful-acts in question cannot be regarded by the court as isolated instances, for they run through the whole period of the life of the institution, and- thus evince a systematic and habitual disregard of the directions of the'company’s charter and a very striking indifference to -the security of the money held in trust by- them!”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Briggs v. Spaulding“* * * a trust, to be exempt from the operation of the statute of limitations, must be of a nature to stand the triple test, viz.: first, it must be a direct trust; second, it must be of a kind belonging exclusively to the jurisdiction of a court of equity; and, third, the question must arise between the trustee and the cestui que trust.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“I am exceedingly reluctant in any way to exonerate directors from performing their duty, and I quite .agree that it is their duty to-be awake, and that their being asleep would not exempt them from the consequences of not attending to the' business of the company.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Briggs v. Spaulding
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.