preference
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 213 U.S. 223 - Josiah Coder v. William Arts · 1909Most cited · 669 citing opinions
in bankruptcy
A preference, if it have the effect prescribed in § 60, enabling one creditor to obtain a greater portion of the estate than others of the same class, is not necessarily fraudulent. ... In a preferential transfer the fraud is constructive or technical, consisting in the infraction of that rule of equal distribution among all creditors which it is the policy of the law to enforce when all cannot be fully paid.
How the Supreme Court has restated “preference”
Each Supreme Court definition of “preference,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “preference”
Court decisions citing the 5 opinions that defined “preference” — 1,841 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 5 definitions, chronological · 1909–1943
Preference implies paying or securing a pre-existing debt of the person preferred. ... Mere circuity of arrangement will not save a transfer which effects a preference from being invalid as such. ... a transfer to a third person is invalid under this section as a preference only where that person was acting on behalf of the creditor.
Bankruptcy Act §60b
Whether a creditor has received a preference is to be determined, not by what the situation would have been if the debtor's assets had been liquidated and distributed among his creditors at the time the alleged preferential payment was made, but by the actual effect of the payment as determined when bankruptcy results.
when a claim is made for preference against funds held by the receiver of a national bank the burden is upon the claimant to establish his title; he must definitely trace something of value which belonged to him, or the avails therefrom, into the receiver's possession.
a transfer, as defined in this Act (title), of any of the property of a debtor to or for the benefit of a creditor for or on account of an antecedent debt, made or suffered by such debtor while insolvent and within four months before the filing by or against him of the petition in bankruptcy, * * * the effect of which transfer will be to enable such creditor to obtain a greater percentage of his debt than some other creditor of the same class