Great Northern Ry Co v. Weeks’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

40 federal appellate · 20 district · 169 state decisions

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 274 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In determining the amount of the assessment the board was not bound by any formula, rule or method, but for guidance to right judgment it was free to consider all pertinent facts, estimates and forecasts and to give to them such weight as reasonably they might be deemed to have. Courts decline to disturb assessments for taxation unless shown clearly to transgress reasonable limits. Overvaluation is not of itself sufficient to warrant injunction against any part of the taxes based on the challenged assessment; mere error of judgment is not enough; there must be something that in legal effect is the equivalent of intention or fraudulent purpose to overvalue the property and so to set at naught fundamental principles that safeguard the taxpayer's rights and property.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. City & County of Denver v. Lewin

2. ““Assessment for taxation is a quasi-judicial act and the tax assessment has the quality of a judgment. [Citing cases] Even if the valuation of the Board be erroneous, the errors of a state judicial officer, however gross, whether of law or of fact, are not violations of the Constitution and are not open to review in the federal courts merely because they are errors. If overvaluation, even though gross or intentional, were, without more, held to infringe the Fourteenth Amendment, every taxpayer would be at liberty to ask the federal courts to review a state tax assessment upon the bare allegation that it is grossly excessive, and without showing that it does more than subject him to taxation on the same basis as every other taxpayer.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Rico Argentine Mining Co. v. Board of County Commissioners

3. “can not be established by a single arm's length transaction in which a unique property — such as Sun Valley — is sold for cash. The principles governing the ascertainment of value for the purposes of taxation are the same as those that control in condemnation cases, confiscation cases, and generally in controversies involving the ascertainment of”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Janss Corp. v. Board of Equalization of Blaine County