United States v. Wilder’s Empirical Analysis
80 U.S. 254 · 1871
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 3 district · 17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 50 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 1982 · most notably Baggett Transportation Co. v. United States (1963), Arthur & Co. v. Burke (1915)
8 federal appellate · 3 district · 17 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 Clementson v. Williams
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 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(p. 921) “Although no provision was made either in the Act of James I or in Lord Tenterden’s Act in respect to the effect of part payment on the operation of the statute of limitation, a judicial exception was ingrafted thereon at an early date, to the effect that a part payment of a debt or obligation would take it out of the operation of the statute. So it has been said that the effect of a part payment, in taking a case out of the operation of the statute or in enlarging the time during which an action may be brought, is not derived from any statutory provisions, but results from the decisions of the courts and depends wholly on the reason of these decisions. (p. 923) “A promise to pay cannot be inferred from the mere fact of payment of part of a debt, there being nothing to raise a presumption that it was a payment on account thereof. The principle on which part payment takes a case out of the statute is that the party paying intended by it to acknowledge and admit the greater debt to be due. If it was not in the mind of the debt- or to do this, then the statute, having begun to run, will not be stopped by reason of such payment. Therefore a partial payment, in order to operate as a new promise so as to avoid the bar of the statute, must be made under such circumstances as to warrant the clear inference that the debtor recognizes the debt as an existing liability, and indicates his willingness or at least an obligation to pay the balance. The debt or obligation must be de”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Garvy v. Wilder · Good v. Ehrlich
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.