Wyatt v. State Roads Commission’s Empirical Analysis
1938
Citation profile
56 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 56 later decisions — most recently September 2011 · most notably Schisler v. State (2006), Hornbeck v. Somerset County Board of Education (1983)
56 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 City of Walla Walla v. Walla Walla Water Co · Tranter v. Alleghency County Co. Authority · Mayor of Baltimore v. Gill · Kenneweg v. County Commissioners of Allegany County · Smith v. Inhabitants of Dedham
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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““. .. Whatever elements of contract by the State, or debt, might be thought to exist in the arrangement, clearly, so far as the cost of construction is concerned, there is no contract to add to the burden of the taxpayers of the State present or future, none to pay anything out of taxes, and no debt incurred for which taxes could be levied. And that is the one kind of debt with which the constitutional clause deals. There is no novelty in the arrangement for self-paying construction. And it has long been settled that by use of the device no public debt within the meaning of constitutional safeguards and restrictions is incurred . . . .””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““. .. [A]n undertaking to pay undetermined, undeterminable, amounts of the cost of maintenance, repair, and operation in the future ... if it can be classed as containing an element of debt at all, is not one for which taxes to pay interest and principal, and to pay the principal completely in fifteen years, might be provided in a tax law. There can be no principal and interest in such a contract obligation. .. . However heavy the burden might possibly become, the contract to carry it is not such a debt with principal and interest as is dealt with by the Constitution . . ..” Id. at 268 .”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The fund from tolls will be one coming into existence only for the special, peculiar, application to the bonds, and is completely appropriated to that purpose.... The State will have no right to the fund, and it would be a misapplication to put it into the ordinary channels for state revenues.”
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.