Bartron v. Codington County’s Empirical Analysis
1942
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 60 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 69 later decisions — most recently December 2017 · most notably Carl v. Children's Hospital (1997), Hart v. Bell (1946)
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 60 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 Baltimore & Ohio Southwestern Railway Co. v. Voigt · Matter of Co-Operative Law Co. · Village of Fort Edward v. . Fish · Frederick v. Douglas County · Board of Commissioners of Huntington Co. v. Heaston
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 69 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Because of the rights with which the law invests a stockholder in a corporation for profit, recognition of such a means of conducting a professional business involves yielding the right of participation in control of its policies and its earnings to lay persons. A share in the fees of professional men would come to the owners of capital stock as a matter of right in the form of dividends. The stockholder's right to vote his stock would provide him with an instrumentality to be used for shaping policy. Ownership of stock would ordinarily qualify him to serve as a director or officer of the company. Lay ownership of stock would be ultimately assured by the incidental rights of transfer and succession. The object of such a company would be to produce an earning on its fixed capital. Its trade commodity would be the professional services of its employees. Constant pressure would be exerted by the investor to promote such a volume of sales of that commodity as would produce an ever increasing return on his investment. To promote such sales it is to be presumed that the layman would apply the methods and practices in which he had been schooled in the market place. The end result seems inevitable to us, viz., undue emphasis on mere money making, and commercial exploitation of professional services. To universalize the use of this method of organizing the professions, or to permit such a use to become general, would ultimately wipe out or blight those characteristics which distinguis”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“It has been well said ‘that the right of private contract is no small part of the liberty of the citizen, and that the usual and most important function of the courts of justice is ... to maintain and enforce contracts [rather] than to enable parties thereto to escape from their obligations on the pretext of public policy unless it clearly appears that they contravene public right or the general welfare.’”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“There are certain fields of occupation, which are universally recognized as “learned professions.” Proficiency in these occupations requires long years of special study and of special research and training and of learning in the broad field of general education. Without such preparation proficiency in these professions is impossible. The law recognizes them as a part of the public weal and protects them against debasement and encourages the maintenance therein of high standards of education, of ethics and of ideals. It is for this purpose that rigid examinations are required and conducted as preliminary to the granting of a license. The statutes could be completely avoided and rendered nugatory, if one or more persons, who failed to have the requisite learning to pass the examination, might nevertheless incorporate themselves formally into a corporation in whose name they could practice lawfully the profession which was forbidden to them as individuals. A corporation, as such, has neither education, nor skill, nor ethics. These are sine qua non to a learned profession. * * * * Inasmuch as a corporation by its very nature, is incapable of passing an examination for the purpose of a license, * * * it cannot lawfully practice dentistry in this state.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.