broker
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 209 U.S. 365 - Richardson v. Shaw · 1908Most cited · 412 citing opinions
relation to customer in margin transactions
The broker acts in a threefold relation: First, in purchasing the stock he is an agent; then, in advancing money for the purchase, he becomes a creditor; and finally, in holding the stock to secure the advances made, he becomes a pledgee of it. It does not matter that the actual possession of the stock was never in the customer. The form of a delivery of the stock to the customer, and a redelivery by him to the broker, would have constituted a strict, formal pledge. But this delivery and redelivery would leave the parties in precisely the same situation they are in when, waiving this formality, the broker retains the certificates as security for the advances.
How often courts cite the cases defining “broker”
Court decisions citing the 2 opinions that defined “broker” — 409 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 2 definitions, chronological · 1865–1908
- ORIGINAL
whose business it is, as broker, to negotiate purchases or sales of stocks, exchange, bullion, coined money, bank notes, promissory notes, or other securities, for themselves or others.