Commonwealth v. Dietz’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

22 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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““When the legislature validly pronounces a particular state of affairs to be a nuisance prejudicial to the public health, it is as much so as if the prescribed situation had been considered a ‘nuisance ... at common law,’ and ‘may be prohibited by the same remedies’ (Com. v. Charity Hospital, supra [ 198 Pa. 270, 279 ]; but, of course, the Legislature may not, under the guise of extending the remedy by injunction to a new situation, interfere with the fundamental right of trial by jury in cases within the class covered by the constitutional provision for its preservation. The act under discussion, however, does not infringe this right, for, speaking generally, it exists only in cases belonging to a class not originally within the purview of equitable jurisdiction . . . and, moreover, there is nothing to prevent the legislature from granting relief without trial by jury when dealing with legal situations, not within the common law and defined by statute since the adoption of the Constitution . . . like the one here involved. “Again, since the Act of 1923 contains a provision for its enforcement by injunction, the fact that a violation thereof also constitutes a misdemeanor is of no moment . . . the punishment by indictment and fine or imprisonment is to be invoked against the individual offender, while the remedy by injunction is afforded so as to give immediate relief against a state of affairs the existence of which, in the opinion of the legislature, will menace the public ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Sciortino