People v. Thompson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ ‘ “Addicted” is not a word of art. It is not a technical word at all. According to the lexicographers, it means strongly disposed to some taste or practice or habituated, especially to drugs. But resort to dictionaries in situations like that now before us has for some reason been judicially deprecated at times and so we go on to the ease law where occasions for defining the word “addicted” have often occurred in the course of controversies respecting applications for insurance. Thus in Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Davey ( 123 U.S. 739, 742 [ 8 S.Ct. 331 , 31 L.Ed. 315 ]) the court said: “The inquiry as to whether the insured had ever been addicted to the excessive or intemperate use of alcoholic stimulants, and, whether, at the time of the application, he used alcoholic stimulants ‘ often or daily’ was, in effect, an inquiry as to his habit in that regard; not whether he used such stimulants or opium at all, but whether he used any of them habitually. If he was addicted to the excessive use of them, he was habitually intemperate; and to use them often or daily is, according to the ordinary acceptation of those words, to use them habitually.” Law writers ascribe to “addicted” the same significance. Mr. Appleman says: “After all, a man is either temperate or intemperate, and in common parlance, a man is not intemperate unless he frequently drinks to excess. Even more elastic is the word ‘addicted.’ This, also in layman’s language, means a slave to.” ’ ” 2”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 189 Cal. App. 2d 300 - People v. Kimbley