Owen v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “(1) Where the trustee by the wrongful disposition of trust property acquires other property, the beneficiary is entitled at his option either to enforce a constructive trust of the property so acquired or to enforce an equitable lien upon it to secure his claim against the trustee for damages for breach of trust, as long as the product of the trust property is held by the trustee and can be traced. (2) Except as stated in Subsection (1), the claim of the beneficiary against the trustee for breach of trust is that of a general creditor. o. Necessity of tracing trust property. The claim of the beneficiary against the trustee for breach of trust does not of itself entitle him to priority over the general creditors of the trustee. Thus, if the trustee sells trust property and dissipates the proceeds, the beneficiary is not entitled to priority over other creditors of the trustee. The beneficiary is entitled to priority only if and to the extent that he can trace the trust property into a product. He must prove not only that the trustee once had the trust property, or property which is in whole or in part the product of the trust property. As has been stated, the mere fact that the trust property or its proceeds has been mingled with the trustee’s individual property in one distinguishable mass does not prevent the beneficiary from following the trust property and obtaining in part at least priority over the trustee’s general creditors. But if it is shown that the property or its ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Curran v. Wittenberg