Whitten v. Coit’s Empirical Analysis
1963
Citation profile
34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 34 later decisions — most recently December 2009 · most notably American Water Development, Inc. v. City of Alamosa (1994), In re the Marriage of Stroud (1981)
34 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 Coffin v. Left Hand Ditch Co. · Davidson Chevrolet, Inc. v. City & County of Denver · Safranek v. Town of Limon · Prinster v. District Court of Seventh Judicial Dist. · United States National Bank v. Bartges
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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The landowner has property in the water in his soil. It is a vested right which cannot be taken away by mere legislation. It is subject only to the reasonable use doctrine. If the ground water is in motion so as to be tributary to a natural stream, or part of the stream water table, it has always been subject to priorities of appropriation on the natural stream. But unless it is tributary to the natural stream, it is not subject to the law of appropriation.”
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.