Nathan v. Spokane County’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Whenever any person, firm or corporation shall, subsequent to the first day of March of any year, bring or send into any county any stock of goods or merchandise to be sold or disposed of in a place of business temporarily occupied for their sale, without the intention of engaging in permanent trade in such place, the owner, consignee or person in charge of the said goods or merchandise shall immediately notify the county assessor, and thereupon the assessor shall at once proceed to value the said stock of goods and merchandise at its true value, and upon such valuation the said owner, consignee or person in charge shall pay to the collector of taxes a tax at the rate assessed for state, county and local purposes in the taxing district in the year then current. And it shall not be lawful to sell or dispose of any such goods or merchandise as aforesaid in such taxing district until the assessor shall have been so notified as aforesaid and the tax assessed thereon paid to the collector. Every person, firm or corporation bringing into any county of this state goods or merchandise after the first day of March shall be deemed subject to the provisions of this section.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Spaulding v. Adams County

2. ““There is a distinction in some of the books between a saving clause and a proviso in the statute; though the reason of the distinction is not very apparent ... It may be remarked, that a proviso repugnant to the purview of the statute renders it equally nugatory and void as a repugnant saving clause, and it is difficult to see why the act should be destroyed by the one and not by the other, or why the proviso and the saving clause, when inconsistent with the body of the act, should not both of them be equally rejected.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State ex rel. Lindsey v. Derbyshire

3. ““Be this rule of construction as it may, the foregoing distinction is without significance, as applied to the facts in the action at bar, since we have reached the conclusion that the proviso of the above statute is void on constitutional grounds,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State ex rel. Lindsey v. Derbyshire