Whitmore v. Gilley’s Empirical Analysis
1906
Citation profile
2 district · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently February 2025 · most notably 370 F. Supp. 247 - Burgess v. M/V Tamano (1973), Frost v. Lucey (1967)
2 district · 26 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 First National Bank v. Tyson · Wheeler v. Bedford · Village of St. Johns v. McFarlan · Mayor of Manchester v. Smyth · Bowden v. Lewis
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Though by reason of her land being on this cove the plaintiff may have more need or occasion than other persons to make use of the public right to the unimpeded navigation of the cove, and her land may be more damaged by the violation of that right, the right itself is still public and not private. Her ownership of land on the cove gives her no greater nor different right to navigate it. Every other citizen has the same right in kind and degree. The plaintiff may have a greater interest than others in the right and a greater need of its enforcement, but that does not change the public right into a private right. Frost v. Wash. Co. R. R. Co., 96 Maine, 76. It may be that an individual actually obstructed by an unauthorized structure while in the actual exercise of the public right may maintain an action for damages resulting, as was held in Brown v. Watson , 47 Maine, 161; but that is a different case from this where the only complaint is of the unfavorable effect upon the enjoyment and value of the land.””
1 later decision 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.