Pierce v. Blair’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 state decisions

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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““As applied to the operation of a mine under a contract with the owners by which the ‘purchasers’ were to keep the mine in operation, and pay the owners one-half the gross proceeds from sales of coal taken out, after deducting the estimated cost of digging and selling, which payments were not to be less than $30,000 per year in any event, and by which the purchasers were also to pay interest on the purchase money and 'keep up the mine, and could receive only salaries until the agreed price should be fully paid, subject to the forfeiture of all that might be paid toward the purchase price and of all title to the mine in case of any default for twenty days in paying principal or interest, or performing conditions, we think the miners must be held to have been employed by authority and direction of the owners, and to have the same rights to a lien against the holders of the mortgage as if employed directly by the owners themselves. . . . Where the owner of a mine, instead of reserving a mere royalty, has, by contract with the operator of his mine, bound the latter for a period of years to pay directly to him a large part of the gross receipts from sales of the coal taken out, and to pay for his benefit practically all the remainder in excess of an estimated cost of digging the coal, which includes a monthly salary for such operator, he will not be heard to deny that the mining was done on his behalf to the degree that whatever title he may have to the mine will be subject to a s”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Adair v. Transcontinental Oil Co.