Myles Salt Company v. Board of Commissioners of the Iberia & St Mary Drainage District’s Empirical Analysis
239 U.S. 478 · 1916
Citation profile
54 federal appellate · 11 district · 183 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 327 later decisions (28 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2018 · most notably Cudahy Packing Co of Nebraska v. Parramore (1923), Thompson v. Consolidated Gas Utilities Corp. (1937)
54 federal appellate · 11 district · 183 state decisions — followed in 28 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 Norwood v. Baker · French v. Barber Asphalt Paving Co. · Houck v. Little River Drainage District · Phillip Wagner v. Oscar Leser a B W
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 327 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“formed to include property which is not and cannot be benefited directly or indirectly, ... there is an abuse of power and an act of confiscation.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““But notwithstanding the studied effort so made and declared, defendants contend that plaintiff missed its purpose and that a Federal question was neither presented to the courts below nor decided by them, and a motion is made to dismiss. It is said that ‘under the law of tLouisiana the action of the legislative body (the police jury), in the exercise of its discretion as to what property shall be included in a drainage district, will not be inquired into by the court, except upon a special averment of fraud which is not pleaded. ’ And such decision, it is further contended, was a decision upon the state law and presents no federal question, the statute of the state not being attacked. We cannot concur in the contention. It is true the law of the state as written is not attacked, but the law as administered and justified by the supreme court of the state is attacked and it is asserted to be a violation of the Constitution of the United States. The question presented is Federal, and the motion to dismiss is denied. And the considerations that move a denial of the motion, move a decision of the merits of the question. , The charge is that plaintiff’s property was included in the district not in the exercise of ‘legal legislative discretion,’ not that the scheme of drainage would inure to the benefit of the property, even indirectly, but with the predetermined ‘purpose of deriving revenues to the end of granting a special benefit to the other lands subject to be improved by drai”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“There is no doubt that the legislature of a State may constitute drainage districts and define their boundaries or may delegate such authority to local administrative bodies, as, in the present case, to the Police Juries of the parishes of the State, and that their action cannot be assailed under the Fourteenth Amendment unless it is palpably arbitrary and a plain abuse.”
3 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.