Macomber v. Nichols’s Empirical Analysis
1876
Citation profile
37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 1997 · most notably Frost & Frost Trucking Co. v. Railroad Commission (1926), 15 Cal. 4th 456 - Parsons v. Crown Disposal Co. (1997)
37 state decisions — followed in 19 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.
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““A highway is a public way for the use of the public in general, for passage and traffic, without distinction. Starr v. Railroad Co., 4 Zab. (N. J.) 597. The restrictions upon its use are only such as are calculated to secure to the general public the largest practicable benefit from the enjoyment of the easement, and the inconvenience must be submitted to when they are only such as are incident to a reasonable use under impartial regulations. When the highway is not restricted in its dedication to some particular mode of use, it is open to all suitable methods; and it cannot be assumed that these will be the same from age to age, or that new means of making the way useful must be excluded merely because their introduction may tend to the inconvenience or even to the injury of those who continue to use the road after the same manner as formerly. A highway established for the general benefit of passage and trafile must admit of new methods of use whenever it is found that the general benefit requires them; and if the law should preclude the adaptation of the use to the new methods, it would defeat, in greater or less degree, the purpose for which highways are established.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““ Persons making use of horses, as the means of travel or traffic by the highways, have no rights therein superior to those who make use of the ways in other modes. It is true that locomotion upon the public roads has hitherto been chiefly by means of horses and similar animals, but persons using them have no prescriptive rights, and are entitled only to the same reasonable use of the ways which they must accord to all others. Improved methods of locomotion are perfectly admissible, if any shall be discovered, and they cannot be excluded from the existing public roads, provided their use is consistent with the present methods.””
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.