Leroy Fibre Company v. Chicago Milwaukee & St Paul Railway Company’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

28 federal appellate · 1 district · 31 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 85 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““That one’s uses of his property may be subject to the servitude of the wrongful use by another of his property seems an anomaly. It upsets the presumptions of law and takes from him the assumption and the freedom which comes from the assumption, that the other will obey the law, not violate it. It casts upon him the duty of not only using his own property so as not to injure another, but so to use his own property that it may not be injured by the wrongs of another. How far can this subjection be carried? Or confining the question to railroads, what limits shall be put upon their immunity from the result of their wrongful operation? In the case at bar, the property destroyed is described as inflammable, but there are degrees of that quality; and how wrongful must be the operation ? In this ease, large quantities of sparks and ‘live cinders’ were emitted from the passing engine. Houses may be said to be inflammable, and may be, as they have been, set on fire by sparks and cinders from defective or carelessly handled locomotives. Are they to be subject as well as stacks of flax straw, to such lawless operation? And is the use of farms also, the cultivation of which the building of the railroad has preceded ? Or is that a use which the railroad must have anticipated and to which it hence owes a duty, which it does not owe to other uses ? And why ? The question is especially pertinent and immediately shows that the rights of one man in. the use of his property cannot be limited ”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. J. J. Mayou Manufacturing Co. v. Consumers Oil & Refining Co. · 102 Cal. App. 2d 789 - ATLAS ASSUR. CO. LTD. v. State of California

2. “trouble ourselves with the thought that my view depends upon differences of degree. The whole law does so as soon as it is civilized.... (B)etween the variations according to distance that I suppose to exist, and the simple universality of the rules in the Twelve Tables, or the Leges Barbarorum, there lies the culture of two thousand years.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Sutter v. Groen

3. “I do not think we need trouble ourselves with the thought that my view depends upon differences of degree. The whole law does so as soon as it is civilized.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Daniels v. Williams