Commonwealth by State Highway Com. v. Combs’s Empirical Analysis
1929
Citation profile
40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 40 later decisions — most recently June 2017 · most notably Stewart v. Commonwealth Ex Rel. Department of Highways (1960), Commonwealth v. Combs (1932)
40 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 Louisville & Nashville Railroad v. Chambers · Louisville & Nashville Railroad v. White Villa Club · Louisville Nashville Rr. Co. v. Burnam, Trustee · Kentucky Hydro-Electric Co. v. Woodard · Louisville Water Co. v. Lally
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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Under the section of the statute supra, it is made the bounden duty of each county to furnish the rights of way as well as those constructed solely by the county, and which requires of them the payment of judgments in condemnation suits for the acquisition of the rights of way. The same section also requires that such expenditures by the county shall be made from its general fund, and, if verdicts like the one here involved should be upheld_ and approved, one of two consequences would inevitably happen; i. e., the various counties of the state would become bankrupt, or the construction of highways would have to be abandoned, and a clear and necessary public purpose would not only be obstructed and hindered, but to a great extent prevented, because, forsooth, juries and courts gave unquestioned credence to the opinions of actually interested witnesses, and others though not parties to the immediate litigation [who] have pending similar actions in furtherance of the same public purpose and whose mutual fellow feeling makes friendly witnesses of them all in the trial of all their cases.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““It would be extremely unfair to say that defendants, after fixing themselves the value of their farm so as to reduce their taxes [being their contribution to the public treasury] should not be confronted therewith when they seek to take from that fund the damages to the same property resulting from appropriating a small fractional part thereof for the public purpose of constructing a highway. At first blush it would appear to be unfair and inequitable to allow them, under such circumstances, to take such diametrically opposed position affecting the public treasury.””
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.