More Witty Lines from the Bench

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No fan I am
Of the egg at hand.
Just like no ham
On the kosher plan.
This egg will rot
I kid you not.
And stink it can
This egg at hand.
There will be no eggs at court
To prove a clog in your aort.
There will be no eggs accepted.
Objections all will be rejected.
From this day forth
This court will ban
hard-boiled eggs of any brand.
And if you should not understand
The meaning of the ban at hand
Then you should contact either Dan,
the Deputy Clerk, or my clerk Jan.
I do not like eggs in the file.
I do not like them in any style.
I will not take them fried or boiled.
I will not take them poached or broiled.
I will not take them soft or scrambled
Despite an argument well-rambled.
No fan I am
Of the egg at hand.
Destroy that egg!
Today! Today!
Today I say! Without delay!
SO ORDERED (with apologies to Dr. Seuss).

--- Wolff v. New Hampshire Dep’t of Corrections, 2007 WL 2788610, Civil No. 06-cv-321-PB, Sept. 18, 2007 (Muirhead, J.). 

 
"A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
but the Vehicle Code does not divorce
its application from, perforce,
a steed as my colleagues said.
'It's not vague,' I'll say until I'm hoarse,
and whether a car, a truck or horse
this law applies with equal force,
and I'd reverse instead.

--- Michael Eakin, Pennsylvania Supreme Court

I do not object to people looking at their watches when I am speaking. But I do strongly object when they start shaking them to make sure that they are still going.

---Lord Birkett

A judge is not supposed to know anything about the facts of life until they have been presented in evidence, and explained to him at least three times.

---Lord Chief Justice Parker

A witness cannot give evidence of his age unless he can remember being born.

---Judge Blagden

[Counsel] has prayed in aid the doctrine of dependent relative revocation. The name of this doctrine seems to me to be somewhat overloaded with unnecessary polysyllables. The resounding adjectives add very little, it seems to me, to any clear idea of what is meant. The whole matter can be quite simply expressed by the word "conditional".

---Langton J, 1942

[Counsel] pled, and pled briefly but strenuously, in favour of a principle of elasticity - elasticity, that is to say, in the construction of a contract which provides for punctuality. My lords, my mind cannot comprehend the elasticity of punctuality. I know of no method of construction of a contract by way of contradiction of it.

---Lord Shaw of Dunfermline, 1921

It is necessary . . . that I should, first, say something of the word which has been the subject-matter of the argument. It is "oomphies". In speaking of it as a word, as one must, one is, I think paying it a compliment, because it barely deserves an appellation which makes it part of articulate speech, which is said by some to be the only distinguishing feature between the human race and brute beasts.

---Evershed J, in a case concerning registration of a trade mark (1946)

Income tax, if I may be pardoned for saying so, is a tax on income.

---Lord Macnaghten (1901)

This case bristles with simplicity. The facts are admitted; the law is plain; and yet it has taken seven days to try - one day longer than God Almighty required to make the world.

---Bacon V-C

The House of Lords is an infallible interpreter of the law. . . . The House of Lords has a perfect legal mind. Learned Lords may come or go, but the House of Lords never makes a mistake. That the House of Lords should make a mistake is just as unthinkable as that Colonel Bogey should be bunkered twice and take eight to the hole. Occasionally to some of us two decisions of the House of Lords may seem inconsistent. But that is only a seeming. It is our frail vision that is at fault.

---Lord Sands (a Scottish judge), 1932

In the course of three days hearing of this case I have, I suppose, heard section 4 [of the British Trade Marks Act, 1938] read, or have read it for myself, dozens if not hundreds of times. Despite this iteration I must confess that, reading it through once again, I have very little notion of what the section is intended to convey, and particularly the sentence of two hundred and fifty three words, as I make them, which constitutes sub-section 1. I doubt if the entire statute book could be successfully searched for a sentence of equal length which is of more fuliginous obscurity.

---MacKinnon LJ, 1940