Head v. Merrick’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"* * * two parties may at the same time be in possession of water from a creek and neither hold adverse to the other; each may justly claim the right to use the water he is using, without affecting the rights of the other, and therefore, in order to constitute adverse possession of water, the burden is upon the claimant to show that his use of the water deprived the prior appropriators of water at times when such prior appropriators actually needed the water; the use does not become adverse until it interferes with the use thereof by the prior appropriators, and therefore proof merely that the claimant used water and claimed the right to use it is no proof whatever of adverse use. [Cases.] While the elements of adverse possession of the two classes of property are the same [land and water], owing to the difference in their nature, the proof of hostile possession thereof necessarily differs. * * * (Italics ours.)"”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Linford v. G. H. Hall & Son · Follett v. Taylor Brothers