Smith v. Pettijohn’s Empirical Analysis
1961
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently July 2012
2 federal appellate · 3 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 Johnson v. Whelan · Walthers v. Tanner · Ellis v. Williams · White v. Saling · City Nat. Bank of Duncan v. Soderberg
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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Where the owner of a town lot, in ignorance of the true boundary between his lot and the adjoining lot of another party, and under the mistaken belief that it is his property, encroaches on a portion of the adjoining lot and erects a part of a structure thereon, and occupies such portion of said lot and maintains such structure thereon openly, peaceably, and exclusively for more than 15 years, he acquires title to such portion of the adjoining lot by prescription, sufficient against all.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“When a person builds a fence on what he thinks is the boundary line between his and his neighbor's land and uses the land and occupies the land actually, openly, notoriously, exclusively and hostilely for fifteen years, the fence will be adjudged to be the boundary between the properties.”
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.