In the heat of litigation, tempers often flare and lawyers sometimes have difficulty expressing their frustrations. When English fails, Yiddish may come to the rescue. So, it happened that a defence counsel, arguing in a recent summary judgment motion in federal court in Boston wrote, in a responsive pleading:
"It is unfortunate that this Court must wade through the dreck of the plaintiffs original and supplemental statement of undisputed facts."
The plaintiffs attorneys, not to be outdone, responded with the following motion that could double as a primer on practical Yiddish for lawyers.
"Plaintiff, by her attorneys, hereby moves this Court pursuant to Rule 12(f) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to strike as impertinent and scandalous the characterization of her factual submission as "dreck" on page 11 of Defendants Rule 56.1 Supplemental Statement of Disputed Facts, a copy of which is attached hereto as Exhibit A.
As grounds therefore, plaintiff states: For almost four years now, plaintiff and her attorneys have been subjected to the constant kvetching by defendants counsel, who have made a big tsimmes about the quantity and quality of plaintiffs responses to discovery requests. This has been the source of much tsouris among plaintiffs counsel and a gantzeh megillah for the Court. Now that plaintiffs counsel has, after much time and effort, provided defendants with a specific and comprehensive statement of plaintiffs claims and the factual basis thereof, defendants counsel have the chutzpah to call it "dreck" and to urge the Court to ignore it.
Plaintiff moves that this language be stricken for several reasons. First, we think it is impertinent to refer to the work of a fellow member of the bar of this Court with the Yiddish term "dreck" as it would be to use "the sibilant four-letter English word for excrement." (Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1968, p. 103).
Second, defendants are in no position to deprecate plaintiffs counsel in view of the chozzerai which they have filed over the course of this litigation. Finally, since not all of plaintiffs lawyers are yeshiva buchers, defendants should not have assumed that they would all be conversant in Yiddish. WHEREFORE, plaintiff prays that the Court puts an end to this mishegass."
dreck: (vulgar) excrement
kvetching: complaining
tsimmes: a vegetable stew; big deal; fuss
tsouris: troubles, worries, suffering
gantzeh megillah: big deal (sarcastic); a long, boring story or speech
chutzpah: insolence, impudence, unmitigated cheek, effrontery
chozzerai: junk, trash; awful food; anything disgusting or loathsome
yeshiva buchers: a yeshiva student; a gullible or inexperienced person
mishegass: madness, absurdity
Read all jokes from:Jewish (+6995), Law (+1200)
