Lopez-Stubbe v. Rodriguez-Estrada’s Empirical Analysis
847 F.2d 931 · 1988
Citation profile
19 federal appellate · 6 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 72 later decisions — most recently June 2018 · most notably Woburn Associates v. Kahn (1992), United States v. Rodriguez-Estrada (1989)
19 federal appellate · 6 district · 1 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
Applies 11 U.S.C. § 322 · 11 U.S.C. § 363 · 11 U.S.C. § 523 · 11 U.S.C. § 704 · 26 U.S.C. § 6672
Relies on Anderson v. City of Bessemer City · United States v. United States Gypsum Co. · Bankers Trust Co. v. Mallis · Gillespie v. United States Steel Corp. · Caplin v. Marine Midland Grace Trust Co. of New York
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 72 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is argued here, and appears to have been the view of the Court of Appeals, that principles of negligence applied and that a trustee could not be surcharged under many decisions unless guilty of ‘supine negligence.’ We see no room for the operation of the principles of negligence in a case [such as this one] in which conduct has been knowingly authorized. This is not the case of a trustee betrayed by those he had grounds to believe were trustworthy, for these employees did exactly what it was agreed by the trustee that they should do. The question whether he was negligent in not making detailed inquiries into their operations is unimportant, because he had given a blanket authority for the operations. The liability here is not created by a failure to detect defalcations, in which ease negligence might be required to surcharge the trustee, but is a ease of a willful and deliberate setting up of an interest in employees adverse to that of the trust. .... Trustees are often obliged to make difficult business judgments, and the best that disinterested judgment can accomplish with foresight may be open to serious criticism by obstreperous creditors aided by hindsight. Courts are quite likely to protect trustees against heavy liabilities for disinterested mistakes in business judgment. But a trusteeship is serious business and is not to be undertaken lightly or so discharged. The most effective sanction for good administration is personal liability for the consequences of forbidd”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“But equity has sought to limit difficult and delicate fact-finding tasks concerning its own trustee by precluding such transactions for the reason that their effect is often difficult to trace, and the prohibition is not merely against injuring the estate--it is against profiting out of the position of trust.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“established the general proposition that bankruptcy trustees may be held personally liable for breaches of fiduciary duty.... 'The most effective sanction for good administration is personal liability for the consequences of forbidden acts.'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.