Mobile v. Watson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

39 federal appellate · 6 district · 94 state decisions

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 184 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““When municipal corporations are empowered to take stock or otherwise aid a railroad company, and they issue bonds in payment of the stock taken, ci to carry out any other authorized contract, in aid of the railroad company, they are to that extent deemed private corporations, and their obligations are secured by all the guaranties which protect the engagements of private individuals. Therefore the remedies for the enforcement of such obligations assumed by a municipal corporation, which existed when the contract was made, must be left unimpaired by the legislature, and if they are changed a substantial equivalent must be provided. * ⅜ * When the resource for the payment of the bonds of a municipal corporation is the form of taxation existing when the bonds were issued, any law which withdraws or limits the taxing power, and leaves no adequate means for the payment of the bonds, is forbidden by the constitution of the United States, and is null and void.””

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Hicks v. Cleveland · Canal National Bank v. School Administrative District No. 3

2. ““. . . It is sufficient that here, in our judgment, there was a continuation of the Corporation of Pensacola, with its original rights of property and obligations, not • a new and distinct creation of corporate capacity and liability. “. . . The inhibition of the Constitution, which preserves against the interference of a State the sacredness of contracts, applies to the liabilities of municipal corporations created by its permission; and although the repeal or modification of the charter of a corporation of that kind is not within the inhibition, yet it will not be admitted, where its legislation is susceptible of another construction, that the State has in this way sanctioned an evasion of, or escape from, liabilities, the creation of which it authorized. When, therefore, a new form is given to an old municipal corporation, or such a corporation is reorganized under a new charter, taking in its new organization the place of the old one, embracing substantially the same corporators and the same territory, it will be presumed that the Legislature intended a continued existence of the same corporation, although different powers are possessed under the new charter, and different officers administer its affairs; and, in the absence of express provision for their payment otherwise, it will also be presumed, in such case, that tire Legislature intended that the liabilities as well as the rights of property of the corporation in its old form should accompany the corporation in its ”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 215 N.J. Super. 361 - Stone v. Old Bridge Tp. · Flanigan v. Leavenworth Recreation Commission

3. ““From this paper and other admissions made In the answer of the port of Mobile to the rule to show cause, and the legislation of the state of Alabama • made a part of the record, it appears that on the day when the act was passed vacating and annulling the charter and dissolving the corporation of the city of Mobile another act was passed to incorporate the port of Mobile; that all the territory embraced within the limits of the port of Mobile was formed of part of the territory, and included all the thickly settled and closely built portion of the city of Mobile; that out of more than $16,000,000 of taxable property of the city of Mobile all but $900,000 was included with the limits of the port of Mobile; and that fourteen-fifteenths of the inhabitants of the city of Mobile were inhabitants of the port of Mobile. While, therefore, the area of territory of the port of Mobile was little more than half that of the city of Mobile, it is apparent that the former included substantially the same itaxable property, and the same body of people, as the city of Mobile. It further appears that all the property, except its wharves, of the city of Mobile, used by it for public and governmental purposes, was by the authority of the act of February 24, 1881 [Acts 1880-81, p. 402], turned over and delivered to the port of Mobile for its use, without compensation to be paid therefor. We are of opinion, upon this state of the statutes and facts, that the port of Mobile is the legal successor o”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Taylor v. Pine Grove TP.