Hamilton Gaslight Coke Co v. City of Hamilton’s Empirical Analysis
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 2 district · 36 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 1989 · most notably Knoxville Water Company v. Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Knoxville (1906), Commonwealth v. Western Maryland Railway Co. (1954)
1 federal appellate · 2 district · 36 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 New Orleans Water-Works Co v. Louisiana Sugar Refining Co · Greenwood v. Freight Co. · Murray v. Charleston · Lehigh Water Co v. Corporation of Borough of Easton · Curtis v. Whitney
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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It may be that the stockholders of the plaintiff supposed, at the time it became incorporated, and when they made their original investment, that the city would never do what evidently is contemplated by the ordinance of 1889. And it may be that the erection and maintenance of gas works by the city at the public expense, and in competition with the plaintiff, will ultimately impair, if not destroy, the value of the plaintiff’s works for the purposes for which they were established. But such considerations cannot control the determination of the legal rights of the parties.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ If parties wish to guard against contingencies of that kind they must do so by such clear and explicit language as will take their , contracts out of the established rule that public grants, susceptible of two constructions, must receive the one most favorable to the public.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““Uor does every statute which affects the value of a contract impair its obligation. It is one of the contingencies to which parties look now in making a large class of contracts, that they may be affected in many ways by state and national legislation.””
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.