Swank v. Elwert’s Empirical Analysis
1910
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 29 later decisions — most recently August 1960 · most notably Lee Tung v. Burkhart (1911), Gover v. Central Vermont Railway Co. (1922)
2 federal appellate · 26 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 Railroad Companies v. Schutte · Kane v. McCown · Buchner v. Chicago, Milwaukee & Northwestern Railway Co. · Tucker v. Hamlin · Backhaus v. Buells
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 29 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““No damages are recoverable for the act of taking; all must be for the act of converting. This is the tort or maleficium, and to entitle the plaintiff to recover two things are necessary: First, property in the plaintiff; secondly, a wrongful conversion by the defendant.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent““In this state conversion has been defined as a dealing by a person with chattels not belonging to him, in a manner inconsistent with the rights of the true owner.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.