Lay v. Phillips’s Empirical Analysis
1964
Citation profile
90 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 90 later decisions — most recently December 2016 · most notably Sylvest v. Stowers (1964), Kubiszyn v. Bradley (1974)
90 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 Copeland v. Warren · McNeil v. Hadden · Garlington v. City of Birmingham · Smith v. Cook · Ex Parte Russell
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 90 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"If a coterminous landowner holds actual possession of a disputed strip under a claim of right openly and exclusively for a continuous period of ten years, believing that he is holding to the true line, he thereby acquires title up to that line, even though the belief as to the correct location originated in a mistake, and it is immaterial what he might or might not have claimed had he known he was mistaken. Lay v. Phillips , 276 Ala. 273 , 161 So.2d 477 ; McNeil v. Hadden , 261 Ala. 691 , 76 So.2d 160 , and cases there cited; see Treadaway v. Hamilton , 221 Ala. 479 , 129 So. 55 ."”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“"The very term prescription is derived from 'Praescriptio' meaning a pre-scribing or former writing, and presupposes a lost grant. Further, the presumption rests not only on the supposition of a lost grant, but on the higher ground that it 'conduces to the peace of society, and relieves courts from the necessity of adjudicating rights so obscured by the lapse of time and the accidents of life, that the attainment of truth and justice is next to impossible,' Harrison et al. v. Heflin et al. , 54 Ala. 552 , and the presumption created by prescription precludes judicial inquiry in a title so acquired. Findlay v. Hardwick , 230 Ala. 197 , 160 So. 336 ."”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.