City of Owensboro v. Cumberland Telephone & Telegraph Co.’s Empirical Analysis
230 U.S. 58 · 1913
Citation profile
50 federal appellate · 24 district · 115 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 272 later decisions (33 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2015 · most notably Frost v. Corporation Commission (1929), Georgia Railway & Power Co. v. Railroad Commission (1923)
50 federal appellate · 24 district · 115 state decisions — followed in 24 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 Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward · Monongahela Navigation Co. v. United States · Coffey v. United States · Arthur Manigault v. Alfred a Springs · Southern Pac Co v. United States
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 272 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"That the right conferred by the ordinance involved is something more than a mere license is plain. * * * The right conferred came from the state through delegated power to the city. * * * That an ordinance granting the right to place and maintain upon the streets of a city poles and wires of such a company is the granting of a property right has been too many times decided by this court to need more than a reference to some of the later cases: [citing cases] As a property right it was assignable, taxable, and alienable. * * * If the grant be accepted and the contemplated expenditure made, the right cannot be destroyed by legislative enactment, or city ordinance based upon the legislative power, without violating the prohibitions placed in the Constitution for the protection of property rights. (Emphasis supplied.)”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““This clause of the charter in the instant case reserves no more than the power to repeal, as well as to -make and amend ordinances, but by no means operates to convey the power to ‘repeal’ a grant of street rights which had been accepted, and had thereby become a contract under the protection of the contract clause of the Constitution. That the right may be reserved to destroy a contract may be conceded; but when such a right is claimed, it must be clear and explicit. The contention here advanced, if conceded, would paralyze the contractual power of the city, for if it has application to this ordinance, it would equally apply to every other contractual ordinance, which the city might enact, though the contract had been accepted and expenditures made.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“. “To construe this general power of repeal as a reservation of power to revoke or destroy contractual rights which have vested under an ordinance, which upon its face makes no such reservation, would be to place every contract made by the city by virtue of an ordinance legislative in form, subject to the mercy of changeable city councils. In the absence of an express reservation in the contractual ordinance, or an express delegation of power to revoke contracts under such ordinances, we think no such extraordinary power is to be implied. Ashland v. Wheeler, 88 Wis. 607 [CO N. W. 818].””
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.