La Belle v. Hazard’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently December 1993
12 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 Dolan v. Mayor of New York · Board of Auditors v. Benoit · Andrews v. City of Portland · Jorgenson v. Metropolitan Life Insurance · Douglass v. State ex rel. Wright
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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““A numerical majority of the courts appear to hold that payment to a de facto officer performing his duties under a claim and color of title to the office effectively discharges the public body from liability to the de jure officer or employee for that period in which the de facto officer performed his duties and received compensation therefor. Board of Auditors of Wayne County v. Benoit, 20 Mich. 176 ; Coughlin v. McElroy, 74 Conn. 397 , 50 A. 1025 ; 64 A.L.R.2d 1375 , 1378. The minority opinion holds that such payment will not preclude recovery by the de jure officer or employee. See, Andrews v. City of Portland, 79 Me. 484 , 10 A. 458 ; Baker v. City of Nashua, 77 N.H. 347 , 91 A. 872 , 64 A.L.R.2d 1375 , 1390. Public policy is cited as authority for a decision by courts favoring both views. Ness v. City of Fargo, 64 N.D. 231 , 251 N.W. 843 . “It is the opinion of this court that where the governmental body is responsible for the situation giving rise to the dispute to office, where it has notice that such a dispute exists, and where the de jure officer in no way acquiesced in his removal from office, he is entitled to the salary of the office regardless of whether a de facto officer has already been paid by the governmental body. The salary of a public official is an incident to the office, and the legal right to receive or enforce the payment thereof goes with the legal title thereto. Andrews v. City of Portland, supra; 55 A.L.R. 997 , 1004.””
2 later decisions 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.