Legal Writing

Longest Known Sentence in a Legal Document?

Your assignment for this week is to diagram the following sentence, which appeared in a recent order issued by the U.S. Court of International Trade: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“CAFC”) having misread this court’s opinion…



Two Sentences, 646 Words, One Lame Opinion

On Monday, blogger Eric Turkewitz was rightfully horrified by two sentences in a decision by a New York appellate court.  Here's the first sentence from Dockery v. Sprecher: In an action, inter alia, to recover damages for medical malpractice, etc.,…


First “Brüno” Lawsuit Filed

Sacha Baron Cohen, who was repeatedly sued by people who were unhappy with the way he depicted them in "Borat" (a group that includes most people who were depicted in "Borat"), has now been sued by someone unhappy with his…





An Unusual Penalty

The New York Times Topics blog has a post today on prepositional phrases and how they can result in unintentional comedy if you aren't careful.  This is common in legal writing, too, and one of the NYT's examples has a…


Taster’s Choice Follow-Up: Is “Youthened” A Word?

A reader has suggested that maybe the most noteworthy thing about the Christoff decision is that "the California Supreme Court thinks 'youthened' is a legitimate verb."  See Christoff v. Nestle USA, Inc., No. S155242, slip op. at 3 (Cal. Aug….


Law Review Article Titles: Stop the Madness

I know there are a lot of examples of this kind of thing out there, unfortunately, but I just happened to come across this one recently: YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDNEYING ME!: The Fatal Problem of Severing Rights and Remedies…