Commonwealth v. Gatto’s Empirical Analysis
1975
Citation profile
41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions — most recently June 2017 · most notably 344 Pa. Super. 108 - Commonwealth v. Williams (1985), Commonwealth v. Fisher (1979)
41 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 Wiegand v. Wiegand · Commonwealth v. Wrona · Commonwealth v. Burton · Kelly v. Jones
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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"As used in this section `offensive weapon' means any bomb, grenade, machine gun, sawed-off shotgun, firearm specially made or specially adapted for concealment or silent discharge, any blackjack, sandbag, metal knuckles, dagger, knife, razor or cutting instrument, the blade of which is exposed in an automatic way by switch, pushbutton, spring mechanism, or otherwise, or other implement for the infliction of serious bodily injury which serves no common lawful purpose."”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage““Therefore, if the 30 inch knife is prohibited by Section 908 it must be included under the phrase ‘or other implement for the infliction of serious bodily injury which serves no common lawful purpose.’ It is clear that the weapon can be used for the infliction of serious bodily injury and therefore we are faced only with the question of whether such weapon serves any common lawful purpose ... “Applying a reasonable construction to the phrase in question, under the circumstances of this case, we can safely conclude that a thirty inch knife serves no common lawful purpose. Had appellant been on a journey through the tropical rain forests of South Africa, attempting to travel by foot from Bogota, Columbia to Caracas, Venezuela it could then be reasonably concluded that a thirty inch knife had a common lawful purpose; but appellant was in a high crime urban area of Scranton, Pennsylvania at 3:30 in the morning. Under such circumstances we can find no common lawful purpose for a thirty inch knife.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“actually cause or threaten the harm or evil sought to be prevented by the law.”
1 later decision 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.