The debate over whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable was settled not in a laboratory, but in the highest court in the United States. In 1883, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Tariff Act, which imposed a ten percent tax on imported foreign vegetables, while allowing imported fruits to enter duty-free.
John Nix, founder of a prominent New York produce company, imported a shipment of West Indian tomatoes and was forced by Edward L. Hedden, the Collector of the Port of New York, to pay the vegetable tax. Nix sued Hedden to recover his back duties, pointing out the basic biological reality that tomatoes are seed-bearing structures developed from the ovary of a flowering plant, making them botanically classified as fruits.
The case wound its way through the judicial system all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court in 1893.
In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Horace Gray, the Court acknowledged that while dictionaries and botanical science strictly classify tomatoes as fruits, legal tax statutes must rely on the common, everyday usage of language. Justice Gray noted that tomatoes are customarily grown in kitchen gardens, served alongside dinner dishes such as soup, meat, or fish, and eaten as part of the main meal, unlike culinary fruits which are traditionally consumed as dessert. Consequently, the Supreme Court ruled that for tariff and legal purposes, tomatoes are vegetables.
The precedent established that ordinary commercial meaning overrides technical botanical definitions in statutory interpretation.