Maddocks v. Giles’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 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 2 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Exceptions to the general rale are stated in Clauses (a), (b), and (c) of Subsection (1). They incorporate all grounds of liability for use of ground water recognized by the common law but remove some of the restrictions contained in those rales of liability. The majority “American rale of reasonable use” . . . was phrased in terms of the overlying landowner’s right to capture ground water, limited by restrictions on the place of use of the water. In operation this protected small wells for domestic and agricultural uses from the harmful effects of large wells for municipal and industrial supply. The first exception to nonliability, contained in Clause (l)(a), continues this protection but follows a modem tendency to extend similar protection to cases of harm done by unreasonably large withdrawals for operations conducted on overlying lands. The second exception, Clause (l)(b), imposes liability upon a landowner who withdraws more than his reasonable share of the common supply. This has always been a possible outcome of a controversy concerning ground water if the source could be classified as an underground stream or if the rule of correlative rights were applied. The concept of underground streams was unscientific and its application could be quite arbitrary and the applicability of the rale of correlative rights was in doubt in many states. This exception merges the two rales and makes it possible to apportion shares of the water in the source to the owners of overlying la”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Spear T Ranch, Inc. v. Knaub