May v. Le Claire’s Empirical Analysis
78 U.S. 217 · 1870
Citation profile
24 federal appellate · 3 district · 40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 114 later decisions (17 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2007 · most notably National Bank v. Insurance Co. (1881), Dickerson v. Colgrove (1879)
24 federal appellate · 3 district · 40 state decisions — followed in 20 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 Clark's Executors v. Van Riemsdyk · De Butts v. Bacon
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 114 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““At law in many cases if property be tortiously taken or converted, the tort feasor may be used in trespass or trover, or the injured party may waive the tort and sue in assumpsit. In the latter case the same results follow as If there had been an implied contract." “In the same class of cases, where the converted property has assumed altered forms by successive investments, the owner may follow it as far as he can trace it, and sue at law for the substituted property, or he may hold the wrongdoer liable for appropriate damages.” “There are kindred principles in equity jurisprudence, whence, indeed, these rules of the common law seem to have been derived.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Hutchinson v. Le Roy
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.