Lamoreaux v. Andersch’s Empirical Analysis
1915
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 45 later decisions — most recently November 2010 · most notably J. J. Henry Co. v. United States (1969), 189 Cal. App. 2d 140 - Nolte v. Smith (1961)
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 37 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Freeman v. Rinaker · Hicks v. Stone · Field v. Consolidated Mineral Water Co. · Johnson v. Starrett · Wentworth v. Tubbs
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 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It must be conceded that the lien statute, if construed literally, does not expressly give a lien when no improvement is begun on the ground. Can we, by liberality of construction, nevertheless say that a lien may attach under such circumstances? To answer this question correctly, a review of our past decisions is necessary. We have no case where a lien has been granted when there was no tangible improvement on the ground. . . . While it is perhaps difficult to see how the value of property is enhanced in any case by labor or material that does not go into the improvement, or how such labor or material ‘contributes to the improvement,’ our liberal policy has led to this result where there is an actual improvement. Is it an unwarranted extension of this doctrine to include eases where no improvement is made, when that is no fault of the laborer or materialman? . . . The ease of Foster v. Tierney, 91 Iowa 253 [ 59 N.W. 56 , 21 Am.St. 343], is valuable for the reasoning of the opinion, but the Iowa statute reads somewhat differently from ours, and Iowa is classed as a strict construction state. ... We place our decision on the language of the lien statute of this state . . . and hold that there may be a lien without an actual ‘improvement’ and that we can fairly say that plaintiffs ‘constructively’ contributed to an improvement of defendants’ land in this case. “We must not overlook the fact, as found by the trial court, that defendants prevented the improvement, thus of their ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““* * * The removal of the old barn by defendants and the making of the survey cannot be considered as an improvement. This was done entirely independently of the contract with plaintiffs, and clearly plaintiffs contributed nothing to this work.””
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.