Mather v. State’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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “(1) Accretion results from a gradual and imperceptible addition to the shore line by action of the water to which the land is contiguous. Land may accrete to an island or to the riverbed itself as well as along the shoreline. (2) One who owns land fronting on a navigable stream owns to the ordinary high water mark. The term “ordinary high water mark” has been defined as being “co-ordinate with the limit of the bed of the water, and that, only, is to be considered the bed which the water occupies sufficiently long and continuously to wrest it from vegetation and destroy its value for agricultural purposes.” (3) The State owns the river bed from the ordinary high water mark to the center or thread of the stream. Land which accretes to an island in a navigable stream or to the bed of the stream itself becomes the property of the State. (4) Land which accretes at or above the ordinary high water mark becomes the property of the landowner to whose shore it attaches. (5) The right to accreted land is the same whether it results from natural causes or from artificial means over which the owner has no control. (6) An island is traditionally defined as a body of land completely surrounded by water. However, before an island can support a claim of ownership by accretion it must be able to show some permanence of its own. (7) Ordinarily, in order to entitle a riparian owner to accretions they must begin to form from his land, and not from some other point so as eventually to reach his l”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Nielsen v. Stratbucker

2. ““An island is traditionally defined as a body of land completely surrounded by water. However, before an island can support a claim of ownership by accretion it must be able to show some permanence of its own ... all the surrounding circumstances under which accretion occurred should be taken into account — the extent of the accretion itself, the growth of trees and vegetation, the nature of the water which surrounds the body of land, the topography of the land, and the testimony of the witnesses concerning its appearance, identification and permanency.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Montana Department of State Lands v. Armstrong