Deffeback v. Hawke’s Empirical Analysis
115 U.S. 392 · 1885
Citation profile
56 federal appellate · 35 district · 124 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 309 later decisions (35 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2016 · most notably United States v. Midwest Oil Co. (1915), Van Brocklin v. Anderson (1886)
56 federal appellate · 35 district · 124 state decisions — followed in 21 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 Steel v. St Louis Smelting Refining · Witherspoon v. Duncan · United States v. Bowen
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 309 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““There can be no color of title in an occupant who does not hold under any instrument, proceeding, or law purporting to transfer to him the title or to give to him the right of possession. And there can be no such a thing as good faith in an adverse holding, where the party knows that he has no title,' and that, under the law, which he is presumed to know, he can acquire none-by his occupation.””
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““To justify the annulment of a homestead patent as wrongfully covering mineral land, it must appear that at the time of the proceedings which resulted in the patent ‘the land was known to be valuable for mineralthat is to say, it must appear that the known conditions at the time of those proceedings were plainly such as to engender the belief that the land contained mineral deposits of such quality and in such quantity as would render their extraction profitable and justify expenditures to that end. If at that time the land was not thus known to be valuable for mineral, subsequent discoveries will not affect the patent. The inquiry must be directed to the situation at that time,, as were the applicant’s proofs and the finding of the land officers. If the proofs were not false then, they cannot be condemned, nor the good faith of the applicant impugned, by reason of any subsequent change in the conditions. We say ‘land known at the time to be valuable for its minerals,’ as there are vast tracts of public land in which minerals of different kinds are found, but not in such quantity as to justify expenditures in the effort to extract them. It is not to such lands that the term ‘mineral’ in the sense of the statute is applicable. * * * We also say lands known at the time of their sale to be thus valuable, in order to avoid any possible conclusion against the validity of titles which may be issued for other kinds of land, in which, years afterwards,' rich deposits of mineral may b”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“any mine of gold, silver, cinnabar or copper” is exempted from the provisions of the statutes, but, in addition, the exemption extends to”
3 later decisions 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.