Kimball Laundry Co. v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
338 U.S. 1 · 1949
Citation profile
219 federal appellate · 31 district · 267 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 956 later decisions (37 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2021 · most notably Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City (1985), First English Evangelical Lutheran Church v. County of Los Angeles (1987)
219 federal appellate · 31 district · 267 state decisions — followed in 33 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedKimball Laundry Co. v. United States (from Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Causby · Olson v. United States · United States v. General Motors Corp. · Ithaca Trust Co. v. United States · United States ex rel. Tennessee Valley Authority v. Powelson
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 956 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The value of property springs from subjective needs and attitudes; its value to the owner may therefore differ widely from its value to the taker. Most things, however, have a general demand which gives them a value transferable from one owner to another. As opposed to such personal and variant standards as value to the particular owner whose property has been taken, this transferable value has an external validity which makes it a fair measure of public obligation to compensate the loss incurred by an owner as a result of the taking of his property for public use. In view, however, of the liability of all property to condemnation for the common good, loss to the owner of nontransferable values deriving from his unique need for property or idiosyncratic attachment to it, like loss due to an exercise of the police power, is properly treated as part of the burden of common citizenship.”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[I]f the difference between the market value of the fee on the date of the taking and that on the date of return were taken to be the measure, there might frequently be situations in which the owner would receive no compensation ... because the market value of the property had not decreased during the period of the taker’s occupancy.”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
5 later decisions 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.