Cook v. Martin’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 20 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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““While a receiver is an officer of the court, he is also a quasi trustee, and occupies a fiduciary relation towards the parties to the action in which he is appointed; and both by reason of the fact that he holds the property as an officer of the court, and also occupies such fiduciary relation, he will not be permitted to deal with the trust estate for his own benefit or advantage. There is no reason why a distinction should he made between a receiver and other persons occupying a relation of that kind, and the decisions make none. It has often been held that a receiver occupies a fiduciary relation to the parties to the action, and is trustee for all of them who are interested in the property intrusted to his charge by the court, and he cannot deal with or purchase such property for his individual benefit, or for that of any third party. ‘It is hardly possible/ said the court in Jewett v. Miller, speaking of an attempted purchase by a receiver, ‘to state the rule of equity too broadly or too strongly. It will not permit a trustee to subject himself to the temptation which arises out of the conflict between the interests of a purchaser- and the duty of a trustee. * * * The rule is entirely independent of the question whether, in point of fact, any fraud has intervened. It is to avoid the necessity of any such inquiry, in which justice might be balked, that the rule takes so general a form.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Melin v. Melin