Newton v. . Porter’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 1 district · 66 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 79 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In courts of equity the doctrine is well settled and is uniformly applied that when a person, standing in a fiduciary relation, misapplies or converts a trust fund into another species of property, the beneficiary will he entitled to the properly thus acquired. The jurisdiction exercised for the pro tection of a party defrauded by tlie misappropriation of property, in violation of a duty, owing by the party making the misappropriation, is exceedingly broad and comprehensive. The doctrine is illustrated and applied most frequently in cases of trusts, where trust moneys have been, by the fraud or violation of duty of the trustee, diverted from the purposes of the trust and converted into other property. In such case a court of equity will follow the trust fund into the property into which it has been converted, and appropriate it for the indemnity of the beneficiary. It is immaterial in what way the change has been made, whether money has been laid out in land, or land has been turned into money, or how the legal title to the converted property may be placed. Equity only stops the pursuit when the means of ascertainment fails, or the rights of bona fide purchasers for value, without notice of the trust, have intervened. The relief will be moulded and adapted to the circumstances of the case, so as to protect the interests and rights of the true owner. Lane v. Dighton, Ambler, 409; Mansell v. Mansell, 2 P. Wms. 679; Lench v. Lench, 10 Ves. 511; Lewis v. Madocks, 17 Ves. 56; Per”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In re Northrup

2. ““It is insisted by the counsel for the defendants that the doctrine which subjects property acquired by the fraudulent: misuse of trust moneys by a trustee to the influence of the trust, and converts it into trust property and the wrongdoer into a trustee at the election of the beneficiary, has no application to a case where money or property acquired by felony has been converted into other property. There is, it is said, in such cases, no trust relation between the owner of the stolen property and the thief, and the law will not imply one for the purpose of subjecting the avails of the stolen property to the claim of the owner. It would seem to be an anomaly in the law, if the owner who has been deprived of his property by a larceny should be less favorably situated in a court of equity, in respect to his remedy to recover it, or the property into which it had been converted, than one who, by an abuse of trust, has been injured by the wrongful act of a trustee to whom the possession of trust property has been confided. The law in such a case will raise a trust in invirum out of the transaction, for the very purpose of subjecting the substituted property to the purposes of indemnity and recompense. ‘One of the most common cases,’ remarks Judge Story, in which a court of equity acts upon the ground of implied trusts in invitum, is when a party receives money which he cannot conscientiously withhold from another party.’ Sto. Eq. Juris. § 1255. And he states it to be a general p”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Pioneer Mining Co. v. Tyberg

3. ““It makes no difference, in reason or law, into what other form different from the original the change may have been made, whether it be into that of promissory notes for the security of money produced on the sale of the goods of the principal as in Scott v. Surman, Willes, 400, or into other merchandise, as in Whitecomb v. Jacob, Salk. 160, for the product or substitute for the original thing still follows the nature of the thing itself so long as it can be ascertained to be such, and the right only ceases when the means of ascertainment fails.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In re Northrup