In 1886 the Nix family brought tomatoes into New York from the West Indies and paid duty on them, because the Tariff Act of 1883 taxed vegetables and let fruit in free. They sued to get the money back, on the grounds that a tomato is botanically a fruit, and in 1893 the Supreme Court said they were right about the botany and wrong about the tax. Justice Gray agreed that a tomato is the fruit of a vine, as cucumbers, squashes, beans and peas are. But the law had been written in the language people actually speak, and in that language a tomato is served with the soup or the meat and not as dessert, so it is a vegetable. What strikes me is that this test sorts the plant by where it turns up in the meal, which no botanist would accept and nearly everyone already uses. It means a tomato has been a fruit to the plant and a vegetable to the person eating it the whole time, and the two never needed to agree until someone had to send a bill.