District of Columbia v. Gallaher’s Empirical Analysis
124 U.S. 505 · 1888
Citation profile
27 federal appellate · 9 district · 40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 110 later decisions (7 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 1961 · most notably Sturm v. Boker (1893), Blair v. City of Chicago (1906)
27 federal appellate · 9 district · 40 state decisions — followed in 15 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.
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 110 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We think that the practical construction which the parties put upon the terms of their own contract, and according to which the work was done, must prevail over the literal meaning of the contract according to which the defendant seeks to obtain a deduction in the contract price.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““When, in the performance of a written contract, both parties put a practical construction upon it which is at variance with its literal meaning, that construction will prevail over the language of the contract.” (Headnote.)”
1 later decision 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.