Michener Appeal’s Empirical Analysis
1955
Citation profile
140 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 140 later decisions — most recently June 2016 · most notably 11 Cal. 3d 506 - Topanga Assn. for a Scenic Comm. v. CTY OF LOS ANGELES (1974), Richman v. Zoning Board of Adjustment (1958)
140 state decisions — followed in 11 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.
Relationships
Relies on Rolling Green Golf Club Case · Jennings' Appeal · Clark v. Board of Zoning Appeals of the Hempstead · Pincus v. Power · Landell v. Hamilton
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 140 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"In In Re Michener's Appeal, [ 382 Pa. 401 , 115 A.2d 367 (1955)] the court stated: "`Zoning laws are enacted under the police power in the interest of public health, safety and welfare; they have no concern whatever with building or use restrictions contained in instruments of title and which are created merely by private contracts. If these applicants were to succeed in obtaining a variance relieving them from the restrictions of the zoning ordinance they would still be subject to the restrictions contained in their deeds, but the enforcement of those restrictions could be sought only in proceedings in equity in which the grantors, their representatives, heirs and assigns, would be the moving parties.' [ Michener's], 382 Pa. 401 , 115 A.2d at 369 ." (Emphasis supplied.)”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“[I]t has been uniformly held that any consideration of building restrictions placed upon the property by private contract has no place in proceedings under the zoning laws for a building permit or a variance.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“‘[B]efore the board may vote a variance, there must be shown, among other things, ‘that the plight of the owner is due to unique circumstances and not to the general conditions in the neighborhood which may reflect the unreasonableness of the zoning ordinance itself’. The board, being an administrative and not a legislative body, may not review or amend the legislatively enacted rules as to uses, or amend the ordinance under the guise of a variance, * * * or determine that the ordinance itself is arbitrary or unreasonable * * *. If there be a hardship, which * * * is common to the whole neighborhood, the remedy is to seek a change in the zoning ordinance itself. * * * Nothing less than a showing or hardship special and peculiar to the applicant's property will empower the board to allow a variance. * * * The substance of all these holdings is that no administrative body may destroy the general scheme of a zoning law by granting special exemption from hardships common to all.”
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.