State v. West’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently June 2017
20 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 United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. · United States Lyon et al. v. Huckabee · Wall v. Colvard, Inc. · Saint Peter's Church v. Bragaw · City of Raleigh v. Mechanics & Farmers Bank
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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is contended by the plaintiff that the maxim nullum tempus occurrit regi should be applied here, and that the City of Raleigh, exercising the power of sovereignty, should not be barred by the lapse of time in the effort to enforce the lien of a special assessment imposed for a public improvement. While this ancient maxim has lost much of its vigor by the erosions of time, and by legislative enactment, it is still regarded as the expression of a sound principle of government applicable to actions to enforce the sovereign rights of the State. Notwithstanding the inclusive provisions of sec. 420 of the Consolidated Statutes ... it has been uniformly held that no statute of limitations runs against the State, unless it is expressly named therein.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[B]ecause public records and documents are the property of the state and not of the individual who has them in his or her possession, the custodian of a public record cannot destroy it, deface it, or give it up without authority from the same source that required the record to be made.”
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.