Boyd v. Conklin’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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““A number of the most striking cases cited by plaintiff’s counsel in support of his appeal, as laying down the broadest doctrine, and as relied upon in a good share of his other citations, were cases where the lands were in towns and cities, and the erections or acts in litigation referred to the uses of that class of property. And in relying on these it was claimed that there was no substantial foundation for any distinction between urban and rural property. There is no question but that such a distinction is recognized in the civil-law authorities referred to on the argument, as well as in several of the cases cited. The distinction is one of substance and not arbitrary. As already suggested, the adjoining owners owe mutual duties — the one to receive the natural flow, and the other not to injuriously change its conditions. It is obvious that tira laying out of town streets and the multiplication of buildings cannot avoid making serious changes in the surface of the ground and in the condition of surface water. Grades must usually be established for streets and sidewalks, and pavements and other surface changes are usual, in addition to the walls of buildings which, with their embankments, must obstruct or change the drainage. It is almost universally expected and provided that sewerage and drainage shall be regulated by some municipal standard. There cannot be towns without changing the face of the land materially. And where the same rule has been applied to towns as to th”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Leidlein v. Meyer · Village of Trenton v. Rucker