Home Telephone Telegraph Company v. City of Los Angeles’s Empirical Analysis
211 U.S. 265 · 1908
Citation profile
34 federal appellate · 36 district · 189 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 344 later decisions (30 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2023 · most notably United States v. Winstar Corp. (1996), Arizona Grocery Co. v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co. (1932)
34 federal appellate · 36 district · 189 state decisions — followed in 39 states
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 Smyth v. Ames · Munn v. Illinois · Hagar v. · Wolfe Londoner v. City and County of Denver · City of Walla Walla v. Walla Walla Water Co
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 344 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The power to fix, subject to constitutional limits, the charges of such a business as the furnishing to the public of telephone service, is among the powers of government, is legislative in its character, continuing in its nature, and capable of being vested in a municipal corporation.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It authorizes the exercise of the governmental power and nothing else.””
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““But in determining whether the legislature, in a peculiar enactment, has passed the limits of its constitutional authority, every reasonable presumption must be indulged in favor of the validity of such enactment. It must be regarded as valid, unless it can be clearly shown to be in conflict with the constitution. It is a well settled rule of constitutional exposition, that if a statute may or may not be according to the circumstances, within the limits of legislative authority, the existence of the circumstances necessary to support it must be presumed.” (citations omitted)”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. In Re Vasko · State v. Pitney
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.