Adams v. Luce’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

25 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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““But where an assessment has in fact been made, where the assessment roll shows on its face all that it ought to show — the name of the owner, the description of the property, the valuation of the property, the tax, etc. — but that assessment is irregular or imperfect or defective, or even absolutely and utterly void, by reason simply of a failure to comply with some vital and fundamental requirement of the law, such property cannot, within the meaning of these words, escaped taxation,’ be said to be property which has escaped taxation in fact. In such cases, manifestly, there has been an ■ assessment — an assessment in fact, an actual assessment. The property has not been withheld from the assessment roll. It has not been omitted by inadvertence, accident, or for any other reason. It is there in the assessment roll. It is assessed at a certain rate. It is all assessed. But the whole roll is void because of such failure to comply with such fundamental requirement of the law. There is, in such latter case, no assessment in the eye of the law; but there has been an actual assessment in fact, though not valid in the eye of the law.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Long Bell Co. v. McLendon