Cross v. Bilett’s Empirical Analysis
1950
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently January 2008
20 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 State of Washington Seattle Title Trust Co v. Roberge · Eubank v. City of Richmond · Thomas Cusack Company v. City of Chicago · Lee v. . Board of Adjustment · Inspector of Buildings v. Stoklosa
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The law is complete in itself wholly independent of what any one may do or say, but if those whom the law was designed to protect consent that the thing prohibited may be done in a particular case, the prohibition is modified to that extent. The validity of the law does not depend on the acts of such persons, and is entirely unlike those ordinances that are not effective until the property owners act, as in the building line case [this is an apparent reference to Eubank v. Richmond, 226 U.S. 137 , 33 S.Ct. 76 , 57 L.Ed. 156 (1912)], and whose acts alone give to the ordinance the force and effect of law. “If the existence of the law depends upon the vote or act of the people it is an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power, but if the law is complete in and of itself the fact that it provides for the removal or modification of its prohibition by the act of those most affected thereby, does not make it a delegation of legislative power.” 110 A. at 847-48 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“"`The plain intent and purpose of the statute is to permit, through the Board of Adjustment, the amelioration of the rigors of necessarily general zoning regulations by eliminating the necessity for a slavish adherence to the precise letter of the regulations where, in a given case, little or no good on the one side and undue hardship on the other would result from a literal enforcement. "`The board cannot disregard the provisions of the statute or its regulations. It can merely "vary" them to prevent injustice when the strict letter of the provisions would work "unnecessary hardship."' * * *"”
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.