Commonwealth v. Gallo’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““(a) ... A person is guilty of theft if he intentionally obtains or withholds property of another by deception. A person deceives if he intentionally: (1) creates or reinforces a false impression, including false impressions as to law, value, intention or other state of mind; but deception as to a person’s intention to perform a promise shall not be inferred from the fact alone that he did not subsequently perform the promise; (b) Exception.-The term ‘deceive’ does not, however, include falsity as to matters having no pecuniary significance . . ..””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 278 Pa. Super. 265 - Commonwealth v. Posavek · 257 Pa. Super. 206 - Commonwealth v. Patterson

2. “The offense of theft by deception is an enlargement of the earlier statutory crime of obtaining money by false pretenses. Under former law (which also included the crimes of larceny by trick and fraudulent conversion), it was virtually impossible to successfully impose criminal sanctions upon persons operating as appellant operated in the case before us. 1 The offense of theft by deception was created in large part to criminalize the practice of taking people’s money with a facade of good intentions and the actual intent never to perform the promised services. Schemes such as appellant’s have made suckers of thousands, and have seriously marred the image of legitimate businessmen and women. The instant case is an example of a type of business operation which the offense of theft by deception was designed to attack — the situation where the actor creates the false impression that he holds an important position with a large organization and that he has a plan for providing valuable services at little or no cost; where the actor and his valuable services become unavailable after the money has been collected; where, upon confrontation with criminal prosecution, the actor makes a belated effort to pretend compliance, or falsely accuses the victim of some infraction of the agreement. The conduct of appellant in this case clearly comes under the offense of theft by deception.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 257 Pa. Super. 206 - Commonwealth v. Patterson