Book v. Earl’s Empirical Analysis
1885
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently February 1993 · most notably Lamar Water & Electric Light Co. v. City of Lamar (1895), Harris v. William R. Compton Bond & Mortgage Co. (1912)
1 federal appellate · 30 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.
Relationships
Relies on Wolcott v. Lawrence County
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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The evident purpose of the framers of the Constitution and the people who adopted it, was to abolish, in the administration of county and municipal government, the credit system and establish the cash system by limiting the amount of tax which might be imposed by a county for county purposes, and limiting the expenditures in any given year to the amount of revenue which such tax would bring into the treasury for that year. Section 12, supra, is clear and explicit on this point. Under this section the county court might anticipate the revenue collected, and to be collected, for any given year, and contract debts for ordinary current •expenses, which, would be binding on the county to the •'extent of the revenue provided for that year, but not in •excess of it.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“* * It is said that this ruling will work a great hardship, inasmuch as the work contracted for was done according to the contract, was worth the price agreed to be paid, and was accepted and has ever since been used by the county. This may be so, but we are powerless to relieve against it. It was said in Wolcott v. Lawrence County, 26 Mo. 272 , when a like case of hardship was before the court: ‘That the law is a warrant of attorney to the county court. All its provisions- are plain, and the contractor, before he undertakes the work, as he deals with an agent whose powers and duties are prescribed, ought to see that the agent is pursuing his authority; for the agent can not bind the county, except as it is commanded or permitted to do. . . . If any effect is to be given to the law at all, its plain directions must be followed, and to allow a manifest departure from them, would not only be a violation of an established rule that governs the relations of principal and agent, but would remove all of the restrictions which the law has imposed upon county courts in contracting debts to be paid by the county. ’ ’ ’”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The contracting of a debt in the future, by the county in any manner or for any purpose, in any one year exceeding the revenue which the tax authorized to be imposed would bring into the treasury for county purposes for such year, unless expressly authorized to do so by the assent of two-thirds of the voters”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Hawkins v. Cox
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.