Nelson v. Robinson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

26 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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““One of the essentials of adverse user in this case is the actual infringement of the rights of appellants for a period of time each year, for the statutory period, that is, the saturation and percolation of plaintiffs’ land by seepage from defendants' canal must have been known to the former, or at least facts and circumstances must be proven from which it might be reasonably inferred that plaintiffs had such knowledge. The trial court did find that such knowledge was a fact, but the record fails to sustain such finding. The testimony shows that there were three occasions when the seepage water was visible on the surface of appellants ’ land. One was in the year 1925, one in 1928, and the other in 1935. The finding that the seepage and percolation was visibly apparent each year since 1926, is wholly without support in the record. ’ ’”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Nelson v. Robinson

2. “One of the principal factors in determining laches is acquiescence. * * * Acquiescence, to constitute laches, ‘must be with the knowledge of the wrongful acts themselves and of their injurious consequences, it must be voluntary, not the result of accident, nor of causes rendering it a physical, legal or moral necessity, and it must last an unreasonable length of time, so that it will be inequitable even to the wrong-doer to enforce the peculiar remedies of equity against him after he has been suffered to go on unmolested and his conduct apparently acquiesced in.’”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Musselman v. Jasgur (In Re Seminole Walls & Ceilings Corp.)

3. ““. . . The courts of this state have repeatedly held that one who permits water to percolate from his artificial canal to the property of his adjoining neighbor commits an invasion of the latter’s rights for which redress is obtainable in damages, by injunction or through the abatement of a nuisance. (Parker v. Larsen, 86 Cal. 236 [ 24 P. 989 , 21 Am.St.Rep. 30 ]; Stoops v. Pistachio, 70 Cal.App. 772 [ 234 P. 423 ] ; Kall v. Carruthers, 59 Cal.App. 555 [ 211 P. 43 ] ; Massetti v. Madera Canal & Irr. Co., 20 Cal.App.2d 708 [ 68 P.2d 260 ].)””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Fredericks v. Fredericks