Hester v. Sawyers’s Empirical Analysis
1937
Citation profile
99 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 103 later decisions — most recently April 2025 · most notably Martinez v. Mundy (1956), Sanchez v. Dale Bellamah Homes of New Mexico, Inc. (1966)
99 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 Pitzman v. Boyce · Clarke v. Clarke · Papst v. Hamilton · Boullioun v. Constantine · Starkie v. Richmond
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 103 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]here large bodies of privately owned land are open and uninclosed [sic], it is a matter of common knowledge that the owners do not object to persons passing over them for their accommodation and convenience, and ... it would be against reason and justice to hold that a person so using a way over lands could acquire any permanent right, unless his intention to do so was known to the owner, or so plainly apparent from acts that knowledge should be imputed to him.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage““The use necessary to acquire title by prescription must be open, uninterrupted, peaceable, notorious, adverse, under a claim of right, and continue for a period of ten years with the knowledge or imputed knowledge of the owner.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““A prescriptive right cannot grow out of a strictly permissive use, no matter how long the use. 1 Thompson on Real Property § 471.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Batts v. Greer · Martinez v. Mundy
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.