The judge in the Da Vici Code plagiarism trial, Mr. Justice Peter Smith (tp give him his correct title) has hidden his own code in his written judgement, apparantly using random italicised letters. No-one has cracked the code yet, but barristers are rushing off to study the judgement more closely.
My money is on ‘I’ve never read such worthless shit’.
“I can’t discuss the judgement, but I don’t see why a judgement should not be a matter of fun,” he said.
BECAUSE IT’S A COURT OF LAW YOU FUCKING IDIOT.
Courts of law have been the source of fun and humour since time immemorial, often in works by lawyers themselves. It’s a pretty piss poor institutuion that takes itself so seriously that it can’t have the occasional joke. It’s not like he put a few jokes in a judgement on in a rape or murder trial.
Indeed. I actually know one of the lawyers who filed this gem:
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/grinch.pdf
That’s an actual brief filed in an actual court of law. Background on the brief here
Best outcome:
The judge just randomly italicized letters. In which case he’d be mocking the people who are fans of the davinci code.
Coming from this…
…it looks like stupid is as stupid does.
Oh, it’s surprising the dry wit that can be squeezed into a legal judgment. My personal favourite example of what has to be deliberate legalese was a tax case regarding a swimming pool in a caravan park, where the pool was held to be plant, and not a building, on the grounds that its main purpose was to ‘afford a sense of pleasant bouyancy to the swimmers’.