Thomas v. Matthews’s Empirical Analysis
1916
Citation profile
12 federal appellate · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 65 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably United States v. Byrum (1972), Seagrave Corp. v. Mount (1954)
12 federal appellate · 23 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.
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 65 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is too plain for citation of authority that a director of a corporation cannot barter or sell his official discretion or enter into any contract whatever that will in any way restrict or limit the free exercise of his judgment and discretion in his official capacity, nor can he place himself under any direct and powerful inducement to disregard his duty to the corporation and its stockholders in the management of corporate affairs.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.