subrogation
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 332 U.S. 234 - United States v. Munsey Trust Co. · 1947Most cited · 1,231 citing opinions
one cannot acquire by subrogation what another whose rights he claims did not have... One who rests on subrogation stands in the place of one whose claim he has paid, as if the payment giving rise to the subrogation had not been made.
How the Supreme Court has restated “subrogation”
Each Supreme Court definition of “subrogation,” 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 “subrogation”
Court decisions citing the 12 opinions that defined “subrogation” — 3,196 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 12 definitions, chronological · 1839–1956
- ORIGINAL
It is a well settled principle in equity, where a judgment creditor, who is compelled to pay off prior encumbrances on land to obtain the benefit of his judgments, may, by assignment, secure to himself the rights of the encumbrances. And the same rule applies where a junior mortgagee, to save his lien, is obliged to satisfy prior mortgages on the same estate. He stands as the assignee of such mortgages, and may claim all the benefits under the lien that could have been claimed by his assignor.
junior creditor paying senior encumbrance
It is the doctrine of subrogation, dependent not at all upon privity of contract, but worked out through the right of the creditor or owner.
The established rule that the surety may not claim subrogation against an insolvent debtor until the creditor is paid in full is a recognition of the inconsistency of that position. Wherever equitable principles are called in play, as they pre-eminently are in determining the rights and liabilities of sureties and in the distribution of insolvents' estates, they likewise forbid the surety to secure by independent contract with the debtor indemnity at the expense of the creditor whose claim he has undertaken to secure.
The object of subrogation is to make indemnity to the insured, up to the amount of the policy, the measure of the liability of the insurer, and that is its justification.
It is both the object and the justification of subrogation that it makes exact indemnity the measure of the liability.
Subrogation is a normal incident of indemnity insurance.
The insurer is given a right of subrogation, not to enable him to avoid his undertaking to indemnify, but that it may not be enlarged beyond that of indemnity.
The equity of subrogation invests the underwriters with the rights of the assured against third persons ... not with a right to override its own obligation to the assured.
Whether upon a valued or an open policy, he is entitled to share in the insured's recovery of damages only by way of subrogation, whose sole object and justification is to make indemnity to the insured up to the amount of the policy, the measure of the liability of the insurer.
- 1941·314 U.S. 314 - American Surety Co of New York v. Bethlehem Nat Bank of Bethlehem Pa[p2]· cited 312×
one who has been compelled to pay a debt which ought to have been paid by another is entitled to exercise all the remedies which the creditor possessed against that other
instanter upon the payment by the guarantor of the debt, the debtor's obligation to the creditor becomes an obligation to the guarantor, not a new debt, but, by subrogation, the result of the shift of the original debt from the creditor to the guarantor who steps into the creditor's shoes.