Smith v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1872
Citation profile
40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions — most recently March 1928 · most notably Jones v. Williams (1897), American Soda Fountain Co. v. Stolzenbach (1908)
40 state decisions — followed in 14 states
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 Phillips v. Coffee
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In the absence of legislative enactment or provision made in the by-laws, corporations usually act through their president or those representing him. He being the legal head of the body, when an act pertaining to the business of the company is performed by him, the presumption will be indulged that the act is legally done and is binding upon the body.”
1 later decision 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.