Reams v. Cooley’s Empirical Analysis
1915
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 62 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 67 later decisions — most recently October 2015 · most notably Miller v. McKinnon (1942), Los Angeles Dredging Co. v. City of Long Beach (1930)
2 federal appellate · 62 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 Zottman v. City & County of San Francisco · Higgins v. City of San Diego · Contra Costa Water Co. v. Breed · Nicolson Pavement Co. v. Painter · County of Sacramento v. Southern Pacific Co.
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 67 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Undoubtedly, a school board, like a municipal corporation, may, under some circumstances, be held liable upon an implied contract for benefits received by it, but this rule of implied liability is applied only in those cases where the board or municipality is given the general power to contract with reference to a subject matter and the express contract which it has assumed to enter into in pursuance of this general power is rendered invalid for some mere irregularity or some invalidity in the execution thereof; where the form or manner of entering into a contract is not violative of any statutory restriction upon the general power of the governing body to contract nor violative of public policy. In the absence of such restriction on the mode or manner of contracting the same general rule applies to such inferior political bodies as to individuals and the former will be held responsible on an implied contract for the payment of benefits it receives under an illegal express contract not prohibited by law. This is the effect of the cases cited by appellant and relied on by him, notably Higgins v. San Diego Water Co., 118 Cal. 524 [ 45 Pac. 824 , 50 Pac. 670 ]; Sacramento v. Southern Pacific Co.. 127 Cal. 217 [ 59 Pac. 568, 825 ], and Contra Costa Water Co. v. Breed, 139 Cal. 432 , [ 73 Pac. 189 ], But while the doctrine of implied liability applies where general power to contract on a subject exists and the form or manner of doing so is not expressly provided by charter or sta”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Miller v. McKinnon
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.