If you’ve been listening to the news lately, then you’ve no doubt heard about a string of Supreme Court decisions that have proven to be somewhat controversial. Of course, that’s how it always goes, but since the Supreme Court is in the news, it feels appropriate to go with a Justice theme for today’s post.
A couple of days ago, Lynlyn, a member of the Young Writers Society, sent me a New York Times article from 2002 about a rhyming justice. That’s right, a rhyming justice.
From the case of Mr. Porreco vs. Ms. Porecco in Pennsylvania, Justice Eakin wrote:
A groom must expect matrimonial pandemonium
When his spouse finds he’s given her cubic zirconium.
Given their history and Pygmalion relation
I find her reliance was with justification.
Apparently Justice Eakin does this quite a bit. From another case involving a woman with two dogs who sued a driver who ran over one of her dogs in which he wrote:
The car was coming much too close, something inside told her;
the next thing Mrs. Zangrando knew, a poodle flew over her shoulder.
To appellee this was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster;
the wingless Angel’d taken flight and ascended quickly past her.
In this brace of miniature poodles, neither one wide nor tall;
one may have been named Autumn,
but t’was Angel took the fall.
Oh, but it gets worse. From a case in Michigan involving a car and an oak tree written by a different Justice:
We thought that we would never see
A suit to compensate a tree.
A bankruptcy judge in Florida:
Upon consideration of Section 707(b), loud I cried
The court’s sua sponte motion to dismiss under Section 707(b) is denied.
Can it get any worse? Yes, yes it can. From the bankruptcy case of In re Robin E Love, Debtor written by a Judge A. Jay Cristol:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary
Over many quaint and curious files of chapter seven lore.
While I nodded nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door,
“Tis some debtor” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah distinctly I recall, it was in the early fall
And the file still was small
The Code provided I could use it
If someone tried to substantially abuse it
No party asked that it be heard.
“Sua sponte” whispered a small black bird.
The bird himself, my only maven, strongly looked to be a raven.
Upon the words the bird had uttered I gazed at all the files cluttered
“Sua sponte,” I recall, had no meaning; none at all.
And the cluttered files sprawl, drove a thought into my brain.
Eagerly I wished the morrow—vainly I had sought to borrow
From BAFJA, surcease of sorrow—and an order quick and plain
That this case would not remain as a source of further pain.
The procedure, it seemed plain.
Judges, stick to your day job.
