29 Va. App. 69 - Hanson v. Commonwealth’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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “When interpreting a statute, we examine its provisions in their entirety, rather than by isolating particular words or phrases. Ragan v. Woodcroft, 255 Va. 322, 325 , 497 S.E.2d 740, 742 (1998); Buonocore v. C. & P. Tel. Co., 254 Va. 469, 472-73 , 492 S.E.2d 439, 441 (1997). When a statute’s words are not sufficiently explicit, we may determine the intent of the legislature from a comparison of the statute’s several parts in pari materia. Virginia Soc. for Human Life, Inc. v. Caldwell, 256 Va. 151, 156 , 500 S.E.2d 814, 816 (1998). In pari materia is the rule of statutory construction that statutes or sections of the same statute relating to the same subject... “should be read, construed and applied together so that the legislature’s intention can be gathered from the whole of the enactments.” Alger v. Commonwealth, 19 Va. App. 252, 256 , 450 S.E.2d 765, 767 (1994) (quoting Black’s Law Dictionary 791 (6th ed. 1990)). See Board of Zoning Appeals of Norfolk v. Kahhal, 255 Va. 476, 480-81 , 499 S.E.2d 519, 522 (1998) (finding that the trial court’s reference to various sections of a zoning ordinance in pari materia in order to determine another section’s purpose and intent did not constitute error). This rule “applies with peculiar force in the construction of a Code to the several parts thereof which relate to the same subject matter, were conceived by the same minds, prepared by the same hands, and adopted at the same time by the same legislative body.” South & W. Ry. Co. v. C”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Wilson v. City of Salem