Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Federal Judiciary Blogs -> Supreme Dicta

Federal Judiciary

: Supreme Dicta

Lady Justice Does Bubble Dance with Scales. Film at Eleven

In keeping with my (much) earlier post on the use of humor by judges and jurists, I follow up with a post on the use of Rhyme in the writing of opinions. While I find all of these are particularly funny, it should also be noted that rhyme included as part of written opinions is frowned upon by the bar. It has not deterred jurists from rhyming anyway. As the author of Judicial Humorist: A Collection of Judicial Opinions and Other Frivolities put it:

Here are presented some forty occasions in which Justice has descended from her pedestal, laid aside the bandage, and done a bubble dance with the scales.

I begin with perhaps the best example of poetic justice (ahem), a bankruptcy case (In re Love, 61 B.R. 558 (Bankr. 1986)) in which the judge issued an opinion sua sponte (on his own observation, not in response to a request from a party to the case). I only include a portion for obvious reasons:

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.

This particular bit of rhyme earned its author a censure from the Kansas Supreme Court. The case involved a woman arrested for prostitution. The judge (Judge Rome) issued a memorandum opinion, a portion of which I excerpt below:

This is the saga of ___ [Doris]
Whose ancient profession brings her before us.
On January 30th, 1974,
This lass agreed to work as a whore.
Her great mistake, as was to unfold,
Was the enticing of a cop named Harold.

Yikes!!

On the other hand, one jurist has used rhyme to make an effective legal argument, and to dissent from the majority decision in a manner that got him positive attention. In Porreco v. Porreco (811 A.2d 575). Judge Eakin of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania dissented from a majority opinion upholding the validity of a prenuptial agreement. The wife claimed that she relied on the husband?s appraisal of the value of an engagement ring, and subsequently claimed that the husband's fraud invalidated the prenup. The husband had valued the cubic zirconium engagement ring at $21,000. The majority reasoned that Mrs. Porreco could not have reasonably relied on the husband?s appraisal as the ring was in her possession and she could have appraised it herself. Judge Eakin responded:

The realities of the parties control the equation,
And here they're not comparable in sophistication;
The reasonableness of her reliance we just cannot gauge
With a yardstick of equal experience and age.
This must be remembered when applying the test
By which the "reasonable fiancee" is assessed.
She was 19, he was nearly 30 years older;
Was it unreasonable for her to believe what he told her?
Given their history and Pygmalion relation,
I find her reliance was with justification.

Or for every prenuptial, is it now a must
That you treat your betrothed with a presumptive mistrust?
Do we mean reliance on your beloved's representation
Is not justifiable, absent third party verification?
Love, not suspicion, is the underlying foundation
Of parties entering the marital relation;
Mistrust is not required, and should not be made a priority.
Accordingly, I must depart from the reasoning of the majority.

Still, this same judge, writing to resolve a case in which a woman walking her dogs (Angel and Autumn) sued the man who ran one of them down in his car, wrote as follows:

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.

I believe that adequately summarizes the material facts of the case.

Full post as published by Supreme Dicta on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).