Circuit Judge Ralph Anderson, South Carolina, said as follows (inter alia):
bq. The evidentiary record consisting of a four (4) day trial is gargantuan, elephantine, and Brobdingnagian It would be hebetudinous and obtuse to fail to be cognizant of the adverse consequences of a ruling in this case. However, a decision by the court should not be infected with pusillanimity and timidity. The karma of this case must not be aleatory or adventitious, but a pellucid and transpicuous analysis of the law and facts With certitude and intrepidity and hopefully, with some degree of sagacity, sapience, and perspicaciousness, this court disposes of the relevant and germane issues. Autochthonously, this court bifurcates the issues for decisional purposes. The primigenial issue is whether a new trial should be granted. The court comes to this infrangible, ineluctable, and adamantine conclusion that defendants motion for a new trial absolutely must be denied. The French phrase pas du tout is applied in rejecting the defendants argument I find defendants degree of culpability to be magnitudinous and megatherine.
This was quoted by Legalguy on September 11, but I missed it. Now legalguy has stopped, but has left some texts up on one page (via Denise Howell).
And yet The Discouraging Word had an entry on September 20th partly about hebetude (can’t find a permanent link). However, this was in connection with Woody Allen.
I found a website at Allison Law Firm collecting a lot of genuine and fictitious humorous legal texts. These include the above one, and also Washington State Attorney Season and Bag Limits, which I’ve used with students to discuss statute language:
bq. 2. Taking of attorneys with traps or deadfalls is permitted. The use of currency as bait is prohibited.
bq. 3. Killing of attorneys with a vehicle is prohibited. If accidentally struck, remove dead attorney to roadside and proceed to nearest car wash.
bq. … 5. It shall be unlawful to shout “whiplash”, “ambulance”, or “free Perrier” for the purpose of trapping attorneys.
and The Night Before Christmas in legalese:
bq. Whereas, on or about the night prior to Christmas, there did occur at a certain improved piece of real property (hereinafter “the House”) a general lack of stirring by all creatures therein, including, but not limited to a mouse.
(For any readers not aware of the original: ‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse’.)