Lovely writing from a (gasp!) judge

I’m reading Citizens First National Bank of Princeton v. Cincinnati Ins. Company, 200 F.3d 1102 (7th Cir. 2000), and have concluded that Judge Terence T. Evans is one of the more delightful legal writers out there.  Although the suit is about insurance coverage, the underlying facts reveal Judge Evans narrative gifts.  He describes a little bank that unwittingly put a financial naif, one Randall Rimington, in charge of its trust department — which he proceeded to bankrupt.  As Judge Evans said:

In retrospect, the bank’s decision to put Rimington in charge of its customers’ trust accounts looks a lot like Mister Burns’ determination that Homer Simpson would make a fine nuclear safety inspector.  [p. 1105].

Although the above isn’t the best writing in the world, it’s refreshing to find it in a case.  Where Evans’ writing really came alive for me, though, was when he wrote about the legal standard to apply in deciding whether to reverse a trial court’s ruling:

Judge Leinenweber’s determination that Rimington’s heart was pure [but his head empty] is a finding of fact that we review only for clear error.  We will not reverse his determination unless it strikes us as wrong with the force of a 5-week-old, unrefrigerated, dead fish.  [Citation omitted.]  Cincinnati [the insurance company] cannot clear this titanic olfactory hurdle.  [p. 1108.]

I’ve never before heard this particular legal standard stated with such clarity.  Nor was I the only one charmed.  The normally staid summarizers, those who work for the West Publishing Company parceling the legal doctrines stated in cases into neat little conceptual packages called headnotes, included the fish statement (with quotation marks) directly in the appropriate headnote, something one rarely sees.