Atkins v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1945
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently May 1983
22 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 Westwego Canal & Terminal Co. v. Pizanie · Atkins v. Smith · Buchler v. Fourroux · 21 So. 2d 89 - Atkins v. Smith
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Article 508 treats of the reciprocal rights and obligations of the owner of the land and of a third person who erects buildings on the land or otherwise improves it. The provisions of the article apply both to possessors in bad faith and possessors in good faith. In the case of a possessor in bad faith, the owner of the land is not considered as the owner of the constructions unless he elects to take them. He may require their demolition or removal. If he elects to keep the improvements, they become his and he owes the person who makes them the cost of material and the price of workmanship. If the person making the improvements does so in good faith believing himself to be the owner or to have the right to do so, the owner of the land built upon has no right of election. He can not refuse to keep the buildings. They are his as part of the soil, but he is bound to reimburse the builder in one of two ways, of which he has the choiceeither by paying him the cost of material and the price of workmanship, or by paying a sum equal to the enhanced value of the land. The builder in good faith is thus made as it were the negotiorum gestor of the owner of the soil, and the works constructed by him are considered as made for and on his (the owner's) account and brings into operation the rule of Article 505 of the Civil Code that "the ownership of the soil carries with it the ownership of all that is directly above and under it." Johnson v. Weinstock, 31 La.Ann. 698 .”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.