Commonwealth v. Henlen’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Thus the expectation which must be justified under the definition of ‘oral communication’ is the expectation that one’s communication will not be recorded by any electronic, mechanical or other device. The fact that one may have reason to believe that he himself will have to reveal what transpired in a conversation, or that the other party to the conversation may relate to third parties the contents of a communication, does not necessarily mean that a party to the communication should have expected that the communication would be recorded, even though the party may not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the communication. It is the distinction between ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ and ‘expectation that such communication is not subject to interception,’ which emphasizes the inapplicability of Gunderman to the facts before us. Because the hearing which was surreptitiously recorded in Gunderman was re corded officially, with the knowledge of the participants to the hearing, there was no expectation that the statements made at the hearing would not in fact be ‘aurally acquired through the use of an electronic, mechanical or other device.’ Hence, the oral statements made at the hearing were not protected by the Wiretap Act.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 448 Pa. Super. 98 - Commonwealth v. McIvor