Graham v. Walker’s Empirical Analysis
1905
Citation profile
2 district · 46 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently May 2023 · most notably Murphy, Inc. v. Town of Westport (1944), State v. Courchesne (2010)
2 district · 46 state decisions — followed in 10 states
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 Card v. Grinman · Fisk v. Ley · Cady v. Springfield Water Works Co. · Horner v. Keene · Coe v. Wolcottville Manufacturing Co.
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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ A right of way by custom in favor of the inhabitants of a particular locality might be set up by the common law of England. It could be proved by immemorial usage. From such proof a presumption was deemed to arise that the usage was founded on a legal right. This right was not assumed to arise from a grant by an owner of land of an easement in it. No grant of that nature can subject the tenement of the grantor to an easement which will outlast the life of the grantee, unless it be made in such a way as to become appurtenant to some other tenement. A right of way by custom appertains to a certain district of territory, but not to any particular tenement forming part of that territory. Nor is it confined to owners of land within that territory. It belongs to the inhabitants of that territory, whether landowners or not. To a fluctuating body of that kind no estate in lands can be granted. If therefore an easement be claimed to exist in their favor, a title cannot be made out by prescription, on the theory of a lost grant. It must have come, if at all, from some public act of a governmental nature. “ The theory of English law was that, if there had been a usage from time immemorial (that is, so far as could be ascertained, from the coronation of Richard I.), affecting the use of real estate by those not able to show any paper title to warrant it, it might fairly be presumed that it arose under an Act of Parliament or other public act of governing power, the best evidence of whi”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[W]e are of opinion that such rules of the English common law as gave [easements by local custom] sanction were unadapted to the conditions of political society existing here, and have never been in force in Connecticut.”
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.