Leonard v. Thompson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The Sadler and Leonard cases both involved a situation in which the court determined that the fact that the plaintiff landowners in the two cases were responsible for the land not being assessed in their respective names barred them from attempting to invalidate the tax sale on that basis. In Sadler, a landowner named P.H. Williams paid taxes on the land in the name of “W.T. Williams.” Notice of the sale was published in the name of W.T. Williams, and the court held this to be sufficient compliance with the law. The court in Sadler, with little discussion of the issue, relied upon the Leonard case in reaching its decision. In Leonard, the landowner failed to comply with the requirement that he deliver a verified list of his real property to the Assessor. Due to this failure to assess, the property continued to appear on the record in the name of the previous owner. The Leonard court stated: We did not comply with the law: he left the lands assessed in the name of the Dorsey Land & Lumber Company. Now he comes into court and seeks to void an improvement district foreclosure sale because he was not named in the published notice as the owner of the land, when it was his own failure to comply with the statute on the assessing of property . . . that prevented him from being listed as owner. While it is true that Mr. Tyrrell, like the landowner in Leonard, did not comply with the letter of the statute, in the instant case we have an additional fact — the error on the part of the As”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Aldridge v. Tyrrell