Wetherbee v. Green’s Empirical Analysis
1871
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 36 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2003 · most notably McKee v. Gratz (1922), Detroit Steel Cooperage Company v. Sistersville Brewing Company R H F (1914)
1 federal appellate · 36 state decisions — followed in 21 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.
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““But this rule only applies to wrongful or fraudulent intermixtures. There may be an intentional intermingling, and yet no wrong intended; as where a man mixes two parcels together, supposing both to be his own, or that he was about to mingle his with his neighbor’s, by agreement, and mistakes the parcel. In such cases, which may be deemed accidental intermixtures, it would be unreasonable and unjust that he should lose his own, or be obliged to take and pay for his neighbor’s, as he would have been under the civil law. Morton, J., in Ryder v. Hathaway, 21 Pick. 305 . In many cases there will be difficulty in determining precisely how he can be protected with due regard to the rights of the other party; but it is clear that the law will not forfeit his property in consequence of the accident or inadvertence, unless a just measure of redress to the other party renders it inevitable. Story, Bailm. § 40; Sedg. Dam. 483.””
1 later decision 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.