Murphy v. Kerr’s Empirical Analysis
296 F. 536 · 1923
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 3 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2005
6 federal appellate · 3 district · 9 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. Rio Grande Dam & Irrigation Co. · Stanislaus Water Co. v. Bachman · Gutierres v. Albuquerque Land & Irrigation Co. · Strickler v. City of Colorado Springs · Nevada Ditch Co. v. Bennett
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““While the corpus of naturally running water belongs to the state in trust for the public, the law recognizes a property right in its flow and use, known as the usufructuary right or the water right. Wiel, in his work on Water Rights at page 304, vol. 1, 3d Ed., gives two definitions of a water right, as follows: “ ‘A water right of appropriation is real estate, independent of the ditch for carrying the water, and independent of ownership or possession of any land and independent of place of use or mode of enjoyment, whereby the appropriator is granted by the government the exclusive use of the water anywhere so long as he applies it to any beneficial purpose, and it is an incorporeal hereditament, solely usufructuary, not conferring ownership in the corpus of the water or in the channel of the stream.’ “ ‘ “A water right is a usufruct in a stream, consisting in the right to have the water flow so that some portion of it (which portion the law limits in various ways) may be reduced to possession and be made the private property of an individual.” ’ “It is therefore the right to divert water from a natural stream by artificial means and apply the same to beneficial use.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“* * it has been repeatedly decided in this jurisdiction that an `appropriation' consists of an actual diversion of water from a natural stream, followed within a reasonable time thereafter by an application thereof to some beneficial use.”
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.