Johnson v. Whelan’s Empirical Analysis
1935
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently April 2016
22 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 Rhea v. Forsyth
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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““1. The owner of a town lot may enjoin owner of adjacent lot from obstructing paved private driveway, constructed on medial line by previous owners, each of whom contributed portion of his lot and half of the expense of the driveway, where such way has been in continuous use for more than IS years, even though no writing was executed by either owner at any time, granting a way to the other. “2. While the mere permissive use of a way over the land of another will not ripen into an easement, yet one who joins his adjacent landowner in the construction of a paved private way over and along the medial line has given such adjacent owner more than a mere license. Each owner, by use of the driveway, is continuously asserting an adverse right in the portion of the way on the other’s lot. And from such use for IS years the law raises a presumption of the grant of an easement.””
2 later decisions 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.