Wilson v. Waters’s Empirical Analysis
1949
Citation profile
42 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions — most recently May 2015 · most notably Dalton v. Real Estate & Improvement Co. (2001), 24 Md. App. 100 - Zimmerman v. Summers (1975)
42 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 Condry v. Laurie · Smith v. Shiebeck · Cox v. Forrest · Pirman v. Confer · Jean v. Arsenault
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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“" 'It is sometimes said that, in order to acquire a right of user by prescription, the user during the prescriptive period must be exclusive, but this appears to be so in a very limited sense, if at all. It means, it has been said, no more than that the claimant's rights must rest upon its own foundations and not depend upon a like right in any other person; it is not necessary that he should have been the only one who used or was entitled to use it, so long as he used it under a claim of right independently of others. For instance, the [use] of another's land for purpose of passage, if continued for the prescriptive period, may operate to create an easement of a right of way, although the owner of the land also passes upon the same line or allows others to pass thereon, nor is it material, in this regard, that an exactly similar easement of passage in favor of another is already existent, or is in course of establishment. ' " (Emphasis added.)”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[W]e think that, since the lot in question has a depth of only 150 feet, this case is not exactly like those cases in which the land over which the right of way is claimed is wild land, woodland, or other land in a general state of nature. In such cases[,] it may be presumed that use of the land is permissive, because it is the custom of neighboring owners to travel over such land for pleasure or convenience, and the owners usually make no objection to their doing so.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"[If] a road led at its start only to the premises of the persons using it, such circumstance is sufficient to prove their use under a claim of exclusive right, in the absence of proof to the contrary. If a road, which was started in such a manner as to make the use adverse and exclusive, is afterwards enjoyed in common with the public, the use does not lose its *Page 819 exclusive character as the result of the joinder of the public therein."”
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.