Morgan v. Walker’s Empirical Analysis
1933
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently January 1980
13 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 Bathgate v. Irvine · Pabst v. Finmand · 6 Cal. App. 387 - Gurnsey v. Antelope Creek & Red Bluff Water Co. · Oliver v. Robnett · 51 Cal. App. 634 - Pyramid Land & Stock Co. v. Scott
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘In appropriating the water which flows across his land, the lower appropriator invades no right of the upper riparian proprietor. The latter has no right of action to prevent such use, for he is in nowise injured, and the former should not be permitted to acquire a right in this manner which the latter is powerless to prevent. The case is quite different where the upper owner appropriates the water. The lower owner is injured at once and the law gives him a remedy, and, if he fails to avail himself of it, the appropriation may, by lapse of time, ripen into an absolute right.’ (Bathgate v. Irvine, 126 Cal. 135, 141 [ 58 P. 442, 444 , 77 Am.St.Rep. 158 ]; Pyramid Land etc. Co. v. Scott, 51 Cal.App. 634, 638 [ 197 P. 398 ].) An upper riparian owner may gain a right by prescription as against the rights of the lower riparian owner by proof that the latter had actual notice of the adverse claim of the upper owner, or that the circumstances were such, as for instance the use of all the water of the creek, that the lower owner must be presumed to have known of the adverse claim.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Sibbett v. Babcock
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.