An article by Adam Liptak in today's NY Times proves that your fourth-grade English teacher was right when she warned you about the importance of writing correctly:
A federal judge in Philadelphia, in prose suggesting barely suppressed chortles, reduced a lawyer's request for fees last month because his filings were infested with typographical errors.The judge reduced Puricelli's fee from $300 to $150 per hour, saying that Puricelli's prose was "vague, ambiguous, unintelligible, verbose and repetitive" and that his "complete lack of care in his written product shows disrespect for the court." Posted by languagehat at March 4, 2004 12:03 PMThe lawyer, Brian M. Puricelli, had offered this vigorous but counterproductive defense:
"Had the defendants not tired to paper plaintiff's counsel to death, some type would not have occurred. Furthermore, there have been omissions by the defendants, thus they should not case stones."
Lovely, how judge's not even mentioning 'dispespect for the clients'.
Posted by: Tatyana at March 4, 2004 02:18 PMThat should be 'disrespect', of course. I guess I now will be 'cased' with stones...
Posted by: Tatyana at March 4, 2004 02:20 PM$150 per hour for writing that is "vague, ambiguous, unintelligible, verbose and repetitive"? Sounds pretty good to me. Where can I get one of those jobs?
Posted by: oliverm at March 4, 2004 03:31 PMsign me up for that too...$150 per hour is great for writing garbage.
Posted by: Blinger at March 4, 2004 05:31 PMI'd do it for $75
Posted by: Claire at March 4, 2004 09:29 PMI'd do it worse for $50.
Posted by: Eliza at March 5, 2004 11:58 AMThis man has dispepticised our septum of juice-produce.
Posted by: bryan at March 5, 2004 05:53 PMActually, thinking this guy just had his word processor set to automatic spellchecking.
Posted by: bryan at March 6, 2004 05:09 AM