Broughton v. Pensacola’s Empirical Analysis
93 U.S. 266 · 1876
Citation profile
24 federal appellate · 51 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 133 later decisions (20 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 1988 · most notably Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960), Meriwether v. Garrett (1880)
24 federal appellate · 51 state decisions — followed in 24 states
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.
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 133 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““. . . It is sufficient that here, in our judgment, there was a continuation of the Corporation of Pensacola, with its original rights of property and obligations, not • a new and distinct creation of corporate capacity and liability. “. . . The inhibition of the Constitution, which preserves against the interference of a State the sacredness of contracts, applies to the liabilities of municipal corporations created by its permission; and although the repeal or modification of the charter of a corporation of that kind is not within the inhibition, yet it will not be admitted, where its legislation is susceptible of another construction, that the State has in this way sanctioned an evasion of, or escape from, liabilities, the creation of which it authorized. When, therefore, a new form is given to an old municipal corporation, or such a corporation is reorganized under a new charter, taking in its new organization the place of the old one, embracing substantially the same corporators and the same territory, it will be presumed that the Legislature intended a continued existence of the same corporation, although different powers are possessed under the new charter, and different officers administer its affairs; and, in the absence of express provision for their payment otherwise, it will also be presumed, in such case, that tire Legislature intended that the liabilities as well as the rights of property of the corporation in its old form should accompany the corporation in its ”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““If a municipal corporation, upon the surrender, or extinction in other ways, of its charter,, is possessed of any property, a court of equity will . . . take possession of it for the benefit of the creditors of the corporation.””
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.