Waste
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 289 U.S. 582 - Rogers v. Hill · 1933Most cited · 340 citing opinions
corporate compensation
The rule prescribed by it cannot, against the protest of a shareholder, be used to justify payments of sums as salaries so large as in substance and effect to amount to spoliation or waste of corporate property. If a bonus payment has no relation to the value of services for which it is given, it is in reality a gift in part, and the majority stockholders have no power to give away corporate property against the protest of the minority.
How the Supreme Court has restated “Waste”
Each Supreme Court definition of “Waste,” 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 “Waste”
Court decisions citing the 3 opinions that defined “Waste” — 440 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 3 definitions, chronological · 1789–1933
- ORIGINAL
if a house be destroyed by lightning, floods, tempests, or enemies, without any concurrence of the lessee, or possibility of his preventing the same, this is no waste in the lessee: For, it is not done by the lessee's negligence, or any wilful act of his; and he cannot be charged with using it improperly, and it would thus have perished, even in the reversioner's possession.
excused destruction
The word as thus used generally refers to remnants and by-products of small value that have not the quality or utility either of the finished product or of the raw material.
tariff context