Martinsburg Co v. March’s Empirical Analysis
114 U.S. 549 · 1885
Citation profile
95 federal appellate · 29 district · 101 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 322 later decisions (32 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2007 · most notably Red Cross Line v. Atlantic Fruit Co. (1924), United States v. Wunderlich (1951)
95 federal appellate · 29 district · 101 state decisions — followed in 24 states
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 Kihlberg v. United States · Sweeney v. United States
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 322 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The parties have, however, the right to demand that the umpire shall, with respect to every matter submitted to his determination, exercise an independent and honest judgment, and that he shall not arbitrarily refuse to accept performance or to give a certificate.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage““A contract for the construction of a railroad provided that the company’s engineer should in all cases determine questions relating to its execution, including the quantity of the several kinds of work to be done, and the compensation earned by the contractor at the rates specified; that his estimate should be final and conclusive; and that ‘whenever the contract shall be completely performed on the part of the contractor, and the said engineer shall certify the same in writing under his hand, together with his estimate aforesaid, the company shall, within thirty days after the receipt of said certificate, pay to the said contractor, in current notes, the sum which according to his contract shall be due.’ Held, that in the absence of fraud, or such gross mistake as would necessarily imply bad faith, or a failure to exercise an honest judgment, tile action of the engineer in the premises was conclusive upon the parties.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““Upon tbe supposition that the engineer made such a certificate as that provided by the contract, there is no allegation that entitled the plaintiff to go behind it; for there is no averment that the engineer had been guilty of fraud, or had made such gross mistake in his estimates as necessarily implied bad faith, or had failed to exercise an honest judgment in discharging the duty imposed upon him. The first count of the declaration was, therefore, defective for the want of proper averments showing plaintiff’s right to sue on the contract,” etc.”
2 later decisions 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.