Gorton v. Schofield’s Empirical Analysis
1942
Citation profile
28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently May 2010 · most notably 16 Mass. App. Ct. 223 - Ahern v. Warner (1983), Langdoc v. Gevaert Co. of America, Inc. (1943)
28 state decisions — followed in 11 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 Dodge v. Anna Jaques Hospital · Gilmore v. Driscoll · MacLeod v. Davis · Geragosian v. Union Realty Co. · 45 Tex. Civ. App. 480 - Simon v. Nance
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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he consequences of 'holding otherwise would be that where a land-owner had made an excavation in his land, and thereby removed the lateral support to which his neighbor is entitled, but had built a solid retaining wall to prevent subsidence, which, during his ownership, prevented it, and had then sold his land to another and that other to others, and, owing to a subsequent owner—it might well be fifty years after— permitting the retaining wall to decay and no longer to answer the purpose for which it was constructed, with the result that his neighbor's land has subsided, he would be liable to answer in damages for the injury, and the man whose failure to keep up the retaining wall was the effective cause of the injury would go scot free, and that too where the subsidence would not have occurred if the retaining wall had been kept in repair.'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“The right of an owner of land to the support of the land adjoining is jure naturae, like the right in a flowing stream. Eveiy owner of land is entitled, as against his neighbor, to have the earth stand and the water flow in its natural condition . . . [I]n the case of land, which is fixed in its place, each owner has the absolute right to have his land remain in its natural condition, unaffected by any act of his neighbor; and, if the neighbor digs upon or improves his own land so as to injure this right, [the owner] may maintain an action against him, without proof of negligence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“"[We] are of opinion [sic] that the burden of providing lateral support to the plaintiff's land in its natural condition is one of continued support running against the ser-vient land."”
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.