Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

501 federal appellate · 331 district · 1,319 state decisions

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 3,312 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it results in some inequality.”

   166 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co. · Idaho Department of Employment v. Smith

2. ““It is to prevent or avoid the injury and waste suggested that the statute was adopted. * * * Thus these pumping operations generally result in an unreasonable and wasteful depletion of the common supply and in a corresponding injury to others equally entitled to resort to it. It is to correct this evil that the statute was adopted, and the remedy which it applies is an enforced discontinuance of the excessive and wasteful features of the pumping. It' does not take from any surface owner the right to tap the underlying rock and to draw from the common supply, büt, consistently with the continued existence' of that right, so regulates its exercise as reasonably to conserve the interests of all who possess it. That the State, consistently with due process of law, may do this is a necessary conclusion from the decision in the case cited. But were the question an open one we still should solve it in the same way.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Walls v. Midland Carbon Co. · Marrs v. City of Oxford

3. ““They could not be absolutely deprived of this right which belongs to them without a taking of private property. But there is a coequal right in them all to take from a common source of supply, the two substances whieh in the nature of things are united, though separate. It follows from the essence of their right and from the situation of the things, as to whieh it can be exerted, that the use by one of his power to seek to convert a part of the common fund to actual possession may result in an undue proportion being attributed to one of tbe possessors of the right, to the detriment of-the others, or by waste by one or more, to the annihilation of the rights of the remainder. Hence it is that the legislative power, from the peculiar nature of the right and the objects upon which it is to be exerted, can be manifested for the purpose of protecting all the collective owners, by securing a just distribution, to arise from the enjoyment by them, of their privilege to reduce to possession, and to reach the like end by preventing waste. * * * Viewed, then, as a statute to protect or to prevent the waste of the common property of the surface owners, the law of the state of Indiana which is here attacked because it is asserted that it devested private property without due compensation, in substance, is a statute protecting private property and preventing it from being taken by one of the common owners without regard to the enjoyment of the others. “Indeed, the entire argument, upon w”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Walls v. Midland Carbon Co. · Marrs v. City of Oxford