White v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is further claimed by respondent that the lien of the state for general taxes, after it has become the subject of private ownership, is subordinate to the liens of the city for local assessments. If this means, as we understand that it does, that the purchaser of the lien of the state takes it subject to all then existing liens of the city for local assessments, the claim is clearly-wrong. Such a rule would practically emasculate the law giving to the state a paramount lien; for the only way the state can realize on its lien is to sell, subject to redemption, the land upon which the lien rests, to private parties. Now, if the state could not, on such a sale, vest in the purchaser its priority of lien over then existing local assessments, it would be of little practical,value to the state; for, in cases where the amount of the local, assessment liens approximately equalled the value of the land on which they rested, no one would buy the state’s claim. We hold, then, that a purchaser of the lien of the state takes it with its right of priority over all the then existing liens of the city for local assessments, without reference to the time when the state lien attached.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Iowa Securities Co. v. Barrett