Sturdy v. Planning Board’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently July 2021
12 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 Dinsky v. Town of Framingham · Commonwealth v. Town of Hudson · 15 Mass. App. Ct. 144 - Perry v. Planning Board of Nantucket · 7 Mass. App. Ct. 80 - Fenn v. Town of Middleborough · McCarthy v. Street Commissioners
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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Deficiencies in a public way are insufficient ground for denying the endorsement. The ANR endorsement for lots fronting on a public way ... is a legislative recognition that ordinarily ‘lots having such a frontage are fully accessible, and as the developer does not contemplate the construction of additional access routes, there is no need for supervision by the planning board on that score.’ [Gifford, supra at 807 .] Moreover, since municipal authorities have the obligation to maintain such ways, there is already public control as to how perceived deficiencies, if any, in such public ways are corrected . . . [PJublic officials can bring a municipality to task if it fails to perform its immediate road maintenance duties. Id. at 76.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“. . . [The road] is a passable woods road of a dirt substance with some packed gravel approximately 11-12 feet in width, muddy in spots and close to impassable at very wet portions of the year. Angles for ingress and egress at either end onto [intersecting roads] are such that it would be very difficult for large emergency vehicles to turn onto [the road]. The road is wide enough for one car only . . . [The road] in its present condition, does not satisfy the requirement of safe access for emergency and other vehicles to the lots in question.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“is not an absolute or inflexible one, but should be given an application which is related to the character of the way and to the kind and amount of travel at the location of the alleged defect.”
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.