Railway Co. v. Prescott
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
More on how this was screened
Northern Pacific Railway Co. v. Myers later applied an 1886 statute that permitted taxation despite those costs for surveyed lands. All five flagged citations have been read. The Constitution Annotated lists Prescott as overruled by McShane; McShane's opinion expressly confined its overruling to the preemption ground.
5 later cases cite Railway Co. v. Prescott; 5 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.
Relying on Railway Co. v. Prescott?
This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.
Treatments
Overruled in part
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The Supreme Court overruled Prescott's conclusion that a contingent settler-preemption right exempted railroad lands from state taxation.
Railway Co. v. McShane · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
We are of opinion, therefore, that this right confers no exemption from taxation, whether the land be patented or not; and so far as the opinion iu the ease of Railway Company v. Prescott asserts a different doctrine, it is overruled. But the proposition that the State cannot tax these lands while the cost of surveying them is unpaid, and the United States retains the legal title, stands upon a different ground.
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Superseded by statute
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The Supreme Court applied a later federal statute allowing tax on surveyed railroad lands despite the unpaid survey costs that had barred it under Prescott.
Northern Pacific Railway Co. v. Myers · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
In Railway Company v. Prescott, 16 Wall. 603; Railway Company v. McShane, 22 Wall. 444, and Northern Pacific Railroad Company v. Traill County, 115 U. S. 600, it was decided that lands sold by the United States might be taxed before they had parted with the legal title by issuing a patent; but this principle, it was said, must be understood to be applicable only to cases where the right to the patent was complete, and the equitable title was fully vested in the party without anything more to be paid .or any act to be done going to the foundation of his right. In the first case the court said two acts remained to be done which might wholly defeat the right to the patent: (1) the payment of the cost of surveying; (2) a right of preemption which would accrue if the company did not dispose of the lands within a certain time. ... Embarrassment to the title of the United States by a sale of the land for taxes seems to have been the concern and basis of those cases. This embarrassment was relieved, and Congress permitted taxation by the act of July 10,1886, c. 764, 24 Stat. 143.
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