45 Wash. 2d 769 - O'BRIEN v. Schultz’s Empirical Analysis
1954
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently May 1997
13 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 Bowers v. Ledgerwood · McAuliff v. Parker · Lewis v. City of Seattle · Mueller v. City of Seattle · Carroll v. Rabberman
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In jurisdictions such as ours, the acts of the user most frequently control. If his acts clearly evince an intention to claim land as its owner, a general declaration by the user that he did not intend to claim another's land will not prove lack of intention. . . . But a specific declaration by a user that he knew a fence was not the boundary and that he agreed to consider it as a temporary barrier will prove lack of intention. . . . And if his acts are equivocal or do not clearly evince his intention to claim as owner, his declaration that he did not intend to take another's land, though not conclusive proof of lack of intention, may be considered in determining his intention while using the land.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[c]ourts have had considerable difficulty in determining 'intention' in adverse possession cases, because intention may be evidenced (1) by the acts of a party, or (2) by his declarations.”
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.