Lazarus v. Phelps’s Empirical Analysis
152 U.S. 81 · 1894
Citation profile
14 federal appellate · 3 district · 63 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 86 later decisions (6 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2024 · most notably Light v. United States (1911), Lazarus v. Phelps (1895)
14 federal appellate · 3 district · 63 state decisions — followed in 13 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 Buford v. Houtz · Schuyler v. . Smith · Otis v. Morgan
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 86 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“As there are, or were, in the state of Texas, as well as in the newer states of the west generally, vast areas of land, over which, so long as the government owned them, cattle had been permitted to roam at will for pasturage, it was not thought proper, as the land was gradually taken up by individual proprietors, to change the custom of the country in that particular, and oblige cattle owners to incur the heavy expense of fencing their land, or be held as trespassers by reason of their cattle accidentally straying upon the land of others.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Maguire v. Yanke · Jones v. Blythe““(If a cattle owner) lease a, section of land, adjoining an unenclosed section of another, and stock his own section with a greater number of cattle than it could properly support, so that, in order to obtain the proper amount of grass, they would be forced to stray over upon the adjoining section, the duty to make compensation would be as plain as though the cattle had been driven there in the first instance.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““This doctrine, however, does not authorize the owner of cattle by affirmative conduct on his part to appropriate the use of such lands to his own benefit. He will not be permitted thus to ignore the truth that every one is entitled to the exclusive enjoyment of his own property. . . . The use and enjoyment of the property under such circumstances [by the wrongdoer] imports necessarily the idea of liability.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Jones v. Blythe
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.