Herrlich v. Kaufmann’s Empirical Analysis
1893
Citation profile
35 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently March 1995 · most notably 24 Cal. 2d 878 - Wulfjen v. Dolton (1914), Travis Glass Co. v. Ibbetson (1921)
35 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
Relies on McCullough v. Clark · Lynch v. . Johnson · Adams v. Hackett · Pacific Bank v. Robinson · High v. Bank of Commerce
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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The complaint goes upon the theory that the plaintiff herein, Herrlich, having a money judgment against Mrs. McDonald, and having upon an execution thereon served Kaufmann with a notice of garnishment thereby acquired as direct a cause of action against the latter as in any case where indebitatis assumpsit would lie. But this is not the law. There is, at common law, no privity between a judgment creditor and his debtor’s debtor; there is no contract relation between them, and no relation of any kind which, of itself, gives the former a direct cause of action at law against the latter. “Formerly assets of a judgment debtor which could not be effectively seized by the sheriff under an execution, such as a debt owing to the defendant, could be reached, upon a proper showing, through a court of equity by means of a creditors’ bill, or suit, but in this state, and in most of the other states, a legal remedy is afforded by statutes providing for proceedings supplementary to execution, and the general rule is that when there are such statutory proceedings they must be pursued. “The Code of Civil Procedure of this state, from section 716 to 721, specifically provides how a judgment creditor may proceed against a debtor of his judgment debtor. Those sections provide (in brief) that after the issuing of an execution, upon a showing by affidavit or otherwise that a person is indebted to the judgment debtor in an amount exceeding $50, the judge may order such person to appear and answer”
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.