132 Pa. Super. 507 - Commonwealth v. Gregory’s Empirical Analysis
1938
Citation profile
10 federal appellate · 17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 27 later decisions — most recently September 2012 · most notably Desnick v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (1995), United States v. Anderson (2012)
10 federal appellate · 17 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 Commonwealth v. Stratton · Commonwealth v. Eichelberger · Bartell v. State
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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The appellant asks us to assume that this familiarity was all with the consent of Mrs. Harkins awd to conclude that it was therefore not assault and battery or indecent assault. We are of the opinion that the evidence warranted a conclusion by the trial court that Dr. Gregory secured such consent as he did in fact obtain to study the mechanics and efficiency of the artificial limb by knowingly and fraudulently leading Mrs. Harkins to believe that he was a doctor of medicine and surgery. Not only was the title of doctor used so as to convey that meaning and that meaning alone, but the defendant did not do — at least he does not say he did— what we would have expected one of his true profession to do. He was an utter stranger to these people and introduced himself to them. The natural introduction for him to have employed would have been to say he was a minister of the gospel if he did not intend to deceive. * * * “Such being the facts which we must assume the court found, any consent claimed to have been given was obtained by the perpetration of a fraud, was vitiated by such fraud and is not a defense to the charge of assault and battery or indecent assault. The deceit practiced was a fraud on the will of Mrs. Harkins equivalent to force. Com. v. Stratton, 114 Mass. 303 , 19 Am.Rep. 350 . The legal reasoning involved is the same as that followed in the consideration of larceny by trick. “The conclusion at which we have arrived is in harmony with that reached in other states. ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““ * * * ‘The least touching of another’s person wilfully, or in anger, is a battery’. 3 Blackstone’s Com. 120. However, it is not every touching or laying on of hands that constitutes an assault and battery; ‘the touching of, or injury to another must be done in an angry, revengeful, rude or insolent manner so as to render the act unlawful’. 6 C.J.S., Assault and Battery, § 9. * * * »”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Seal
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.