Sutton v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
256 U.S. 575 · 1921
Citation profile
88 federal appellate · 39 district · 24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 355 later decisions (32 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2019 · most notably Heckler v. Community Health Services of Crawford County, Inc. (1984), Hercules Incorporated v. United States (1996)
88 federal appellate · 39 district · 24 state decisions — followed in 10 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 United States v. North American Transportation & Trading Co. · Wisconsin Central Railroad v. United States · United States v. Pacific Railroad · Grand Trunk Western Railway 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 355 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“About May 15, 1914, it was discovered that through a mistake of the [Government] inspector so much work had already been done that if paid for at the unit rates, it would call for an amount far in excess of the appropriation available. The government engineer in charge ordered operations discontinued immediately; and this contractor had no further connection with the work.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Whenever a structure is permanently affixed to real property belonging to an individual, without his consent or request, he cannot be held responsible because of its subsequent use. It becomes his by being annexed to the soil; and he is not obliged to remove it to escape liability. He is not deemed to have accepted it so as to incur an obligation to pay for it....”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Rackley v. Rackley“[t]he limitation upon the authority to impose contract obligations upon the United States is as applicable to contracts by implication as it is to those expressly made.”
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.