Eyster v. Gaff’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

83 federal appellate · 47 district · 115 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 364 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The debtor of a bankrupt, or tbe man who contests the right to real or personal property with him, loses none of those rights by the bankruptcy of his adversary. The same courts remain open to him in such contests, and the statute has not devested those courts of jurisdiction in such actions. If it has, for certain classes of actions, conferred a jurisdiction for the benefit of the assignee in the circuit or district courts of the United States, it is concurrent with, and does not devest them of, the state courts.””

   10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Davis v. Friedlander · Heath v. Shaffer

2. ““ * * * The Bankrupt Act expressly provides that the assignee may prosecute or defend all suits in which the bankrupt was a party at the time he was adjudged a bankrupt. If there was any reason for interposing, the assignee could have had himself substituted for the bankrupt, or made a defendant on petition. If he chose to let the suit proceed without such defense, he stands as any other person would on whom the title had fallen since the suit was commenced. “If is a mistake to suppose that the Bankrupt Law avoids of its own force all judicial proceedings in the State or other courts the instant one of the parties is adjudged a bankrupt. There is nothing in the act which sanctions such a proposition. “The court in the case before us had acquired jurisdiction of the parties and of the subject-matter of the suit. It was competent to administer full justice, and was proceeding, according to the law which governed such a suit, to do so. It could not take judicial notice of the proceedings in bankruptcy in another court, however seriously they might have affected the rights of parties to the suit already pending. “It was the duty of that court to proceed to a decree as between the parties before it, until by some proper pleadings in the case it was informed of the changed relations of any of those parties to the subject-matter of the suit. Having such jurisdiction, and performing its duty as the case stood in that court, we are at a loss to see how its decree can be treated as voi”

   9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Conner v. Long · Clark v. Mutual Lumber Co.

3. ““The obvious reason for this is that if, when the jurisdiction of the court has once attached, it could be ousted by the transfer of the defendant’s interest, there would be no end to the litigation, and justice would be defeated by the number of these transfers. Another reason is that, when such a case is ended by a final decree transferring the title, that title relates back to the date of the instrument on which the suit is based, or to the commencement of the suit; and the court will not permit its judgment or decree to be rendered nugatory by intermediate conveyances.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In re Dialogue · Mid-West Federal Savings Bank v. Kerlin