Sawyer v. Hoag’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

42 federal appellate · 26 district · 96 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 267 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Though, it be a doctrine of modern date, we think it now well established that the capital stock of a corporation, especially its unpaid subscriptions, is a trust fund for the benefit of the general creditors of the corporation. And when we consider the rapid development of corporations as instrumentalities of the commercial and business world in the last few years, with the corresponding necessity of adapting legal principles to the new and varying exigencies of this business, it is no solid objection to such a principle that it is modern, for the occasion for it could not sooner have arisen.””

   12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Scovill v. Thayer · National Tube Works Co. v. Ballou

2. ““It is very true, that by the power of the Legislature there is created in all acts of incorporation a legal entity, which can contract with its shareholders in the ordinary transactions of business as with oilier persons. * * * But, after all, this artificial body is but the representative of its stockholders, and exists mainly for their benefit, and is governed and controlled by them through the officers whom they elect. And the interest and power of legal control of each shareholder is in exact proportion to the amount of his stock. It is, therefore, but just that when the interest of the public or of strangers dealing with this corporation is to be affected by any transaction between the stockholders who own the corporation and the corporation itself, such transaction should be subject to rigid scrutiny, and if found to be infected with, anything unfair towards such third person, calculated to injure him, or designed intentionally and inequitably to screen the stockholder from loss at the expense of the general creditor, it should be disregarded or annulled so far as It may inequitably affect him.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Scott v. Abbott

3. “The [trustee] is the representative of the creditor as well as [of] the bankrupt ... The statute is full of authority to him to sue for and recover property, rights, and credits, where the bankrupt could not have sustained the action, and to set aside as void transactions by which the bankrupt himself would be bound. All this, of course, is in the interest of the creditors of the bankrupt,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Jarboe v. United States Small Business Administration (In Re Hancock)