Klamath Water Users Protective Ass'n v. Patterson’s Empirical Analysis
204 F.3d 1206 · 1999
Citation profile
49 federal appellate · 29 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 143 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2023 · most notably Orff v. United States (2005), Okanogan Highlands Alliance v. Williams (2000)
49 federal appellate · 29 district · 3 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 Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill · Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe · Hal Roach Studios, Inc. v. Richard Feiner & Co. · United States v. Dion · Kennewick Irrigation District v. United States
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 143 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A written contract must be read as a whole and every part interpreted with reference to the whole, with preference given to reasonable interpretations. Contract terms are to be given their ordinary meaning, and when the terms of a contract are clear, the intent of the parties must be ascertained from the contract itself. Whenever possible, the plain language of the contract should be considered first.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“: 24 Parties that benefit from a government contract are generally assumed to be incidental beneficiaries, and may not enforce the contract absent a clear intent to the contrary. Government contracts often benefit the public, but individual members of the public are treated as incidental beneficiaries unless a different intention is manifested. 25 Id. (emphasis added; internal citations and quotation marks omitted). We concluded after examining the plain language of the 1956 contract that the irrigators were not intended third-party beneficiaries:”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[b]efore a third party can recover under a contract, it must show that the contract was made for its direct benefit — that it is an intended beneficiary of the contract.”
3 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.