Dooling v. Dabel’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

33 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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““. . . The burden is ordinarily on one who claims a prescriptive right to an easement in a private roadway over another man’s property to affirmatively prove the essential elements thereof. . . . But, when the evidence of prescriptive use of a roadway is conflicting, it is the sole province of the jury or the trial judge to determine from the facts and circumstances of the case whether the prescriptive title thereto has been established. Where there is conflict of evidence in that regard, and there is substantial evidence to support the findings of the court or jury, as there is in this case, the conclusions of the court may not be interfered with on appeal. (Conaway v. Toogood, 172 Cal. 706, 709 [158 P. 200]; McMorris v. Pagano, 63 Cal.App.2d 446, 450 [ 146 P.2d 944 ].) ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 86 Cal. App. 2d 844 - Bartholomew v. Staheli

2. “The line of travel over a roadway which is claimed by prescription may not be a shifting course, but must be certain and definite. Slight deviations from the accustomed route will not defeat an easement, but substantial changes which break the continuity of the course of travel will destroy the claim to prescriptive rights.... [Citations.] [M]anifestly the distance to which a roadway may be changed without destroying an easement will be determined somewhat by the character of the land over which it passes, together with the value, improvements, and purposes to which the land is adapted.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 35 Cal. 3d 564 - Warsaw v. Chicago Metallic Ceilings, Inc.