156 W. Va. 98 - Walter v. Ritchie’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
35 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently April 2016 · most notably 201 W. Va. 108 - Walker v. West Virginia Ethics Commission. (1997), 174 W. Va. 139 - Allen v. State of West Virginia Human Rights Commission (1984)
35 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 Ex parte Endo · Snell v. Wyman · 73 Wash. 2d 405 - Markham Advertising Co. v. State · Markham Advertising Co. Inc. v. Washington · 146 W. Va. 22 - Farley v. Graney
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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Mandamus will lie to compel performance of a nondiscretionary duty of an administrative officer though another remedy exists, where it appears that the official, under misapprehension of law, refuses to recognize the nature and scope of his duty and proceeds on the belief that he has discretion to do or not to do the thing demanded of him.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage““Where the duty of the highway commissioner is so plain in point of law and so clear in matter of fact that no element of discretion is left as to the precise mode of its performance, such duty is ministerial and a writ of mandamus is proper to compel its performance.” Syllabus Point 3, Walter v. Ritchie, 156 W. Va. 98 , 191 S.E.2d 275 (1972).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““Their power is dependent upon statutes, so that they must find within the statute warrant for the exercise of any authority which they claim. They have no general or common-law powers but only such as have been conferred upon them by law expressly or by implication.” Walter v. Ritchie, 156 W.Va. 98 , 191 S.E.2d 275, 279 (1972).”
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.