National Waterworks Co. v. Kansas City’s Empirical Analysis
62 F. 853 · 1894
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 8 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 51 later decisions (9 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 1977 · most notably Simpson v. Shepard (1913), State of Missouri Southwestern Bell Telephone Co v. Public Service Commission of Missouri (1923)
8 federal appellate · 8 district · 9 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.
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 51 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““A completed system of waterworks, such, as the company has, without a single connection between the pipes and the streets and the buildings of the city, would be a property of much less value than that system connected, as it is, with so many buildings, and earning, in consequence thereof, the money which it does earn. The fact that it is a system in operation, not only with a capacity to supply the city, but actually supplying many buildings in the city — not only with a capacity to earn, but actually earning — makes it true that ‘the fair and equitable value’ is something in excess of the cost of reproduction.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““mere cost of purchasing- the land, constructing the buildings, putting in machinery, and laying the pipes in the streets, in other words, the cost of reproduction, does not give the value of the property as it is to-day.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““It [the city] has for many years recognized and accepted this waterworks system as having been constructed in full compliance with the demands of the contract, and it is now too late to repudiate such recognition.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.