City of Louisville v. Cumberland Telephone & Telegraph Co.’s Empirical Analysis
224 U.S. 649 · 1912
Citation profile
18 federal appellate · 16 district · 72 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 156 later decisions (24 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2009 · most notably Shapiro v. Thompson (1969), Old Colony Trust Company v. City of Omaha (1913)
18 federal appellate · 16 district · 72 state decisions — followed in 23 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 Central Transportation Co. v. Pullman's Palace Car Co. · City of St Louis v. Western Union Tel Co · Blair v. City of Chicago · Home Telephone Telegraph Company v. City of Los Angeles · Detroit v. Detroit Citizens' Street Railway 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 156 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In considering the duration of such a franchise it is necessary to consider that a telephone system cannot be operated without the use of poles, conduits, wires, and fixtures. These structures are permanent in their nature and require a large investment for their erection and .construction. To say that the right to maintain these appliances was only a license, which could be revoked at will, would operate to nullify the charter itself, and thus defeat the state’s purpose to secure a telephone system for public use. For, manifestly, no one would have been willing to incur the heavy expense of installing these necessary and costly fixtures if they were removable at will of the city, and the utility and value of the entire plant be thereby destroyed. Such a construction of the charter cannot be supported, either from a practical or technical standpoint.” City of Louisville v. Cumberland Tel. & Tel. Co., 224 U.S. 649 , 32 S.Ct. 572, 576 , 56 L.Ed. 934 . “The circumstances surrounding the grant of 1892 shows no intention either to give or accept a mere revocable right. It would be against common experience to conclude that rational men wittingly invested large sums of money in building a railroad subject to destruction at any moment by mere resolution of county commissioners. Detroit v. Detroit Citizen’s Street R.Co., 184 U.S. 368, 384 , 22 S.Ct. 410 , 46 L.Ed. 592 . “Where there are no controlling provisions in state Constitution or statutes and no prior adjudication by its cour”
5 later decisions 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.