Taylor v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1904
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 5 district · 31 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 45 later decisions — most recently January 2013 · most notably Boone v. Kingsbury (1928), State v. Korrer (1914)
5 federal appellate · 5 district · 31 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 Shively v. Bowlby · John Pollard et al. v. John Hagan et al. · Illinois Central Railroad v. Illinois · Illinois Cent Co v. State of Illinois City of Chicago · McCready v. Virginia
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 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In the case before us the property of the plaintiff is used merely for farming purposes. There has not been erected, and as far as the record discloses there is no purpose to erect, any pier or wharf. She is engaged in no business requiring such access to the channel of the stream as cannot be fully enjoyed consistently with every right which the state has exercised, or which it has delegated to others. The commonwealth holds as trustee a vast body of land covered by the flow of the tide, precisely as in the case before us, for the benefit of her citizens. It is not only her right, but her duty, as such trustee, to render this property productive. Is it reasonable that the commonwealth, holding title to the soil, is to be wholly subordinated in the use of it to the use with which another is clothed merely by virtue of being an owner of the adjoining shore, when the rights of each and all can be fully protected without diminution and without hindrance. If the time should come when the river front of the plaintiff shall be divided into lots whose owners find it necessary to their profitable enjoyment to erect piers and wharves upon them, if they engage in business which shall require exclusive access to the channel of the stream, it may be that a case could then be presented more meritorious than that which we have under consideration, and in the light of changed conditions the court may be again called upon to consider the respective rights of the riparian owner and those rem”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he right to make a reasonable use of the water as it flows past or laves the land.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“‘‘This right of the riparian owner is not a mero license or privilege, but is property, property in the soil, up to the line of navigability, though covered ■by water; for a wharf, pier or bulkhead, can only be built on the soil. It is not a mere easement to pass over, or a privilege to use the surface, but property in the soil under the water, on which to fasten and build such structure: and for this purpose, and subject to the restriction that navigable waters shall not be obstructed, is as much property as the land above the margin of a navigable stream.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.