William Van Buren v. William H Digges Use of Joseph Liebey’s Empirical Analysis
52 U.S. 461 · 1850
Citation profile
17 federal appellate · 2 district · 11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 59 later decisions (6 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2015 · most notably Chapman v. United States (1961), Sun Printing Publishing Association v. William L Moore (1902)
17 federal appellate · 2 district · 11 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 Runyan v. Nichols
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 59 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Tbe clause of tlie contract providing for the forfeiture of 10 per centum of the amount of the contract price, upon failure to complete the work by a given day, cannot properly be regarded as an agreement or settlement of liquidated damages. The term ‘forfeiture’ imports a penalty. It has no necessary or natural connection with the measure or degree of injury which may result from a breach of contract, or from an imperfect performance. It implies an absolute infliction, regardless of the nature and extent of the causes by which it is superinduced.””
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.