People v. Van Ness’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

21 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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““There was no authority of law for collecting any such moneys of the ship-masters. It is now contended by Van Ness that as this money was collected by him without legal sanction he had a right to retain it as his own, and as he did not retain it, but paid it into the treasury, he should have been credited with it by the court below, and that the amount should be deducted by this court from the amount of the judgment. We cannot give our sanction to this contention. The money, having been collected under color of office, should have been paid into the state treasury, and did not belong, in any view, to Van Ness, and he had no right to retain it. He only did his duty in paying it over to the state. It belonged really to the ship-masters of whom it was collected; but the state, in whose and by whose authority it was pretended to have been collected, was the proper custodian of such moneys.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Nez Perce County v. Dent