Reason to Clerk

On a forum I post on, the following case's language and footnote was posted:

United States v. Murphy, 406 F.3d 857 (7th Cir.2005)

The test of this decision that is most entertaining reads:

On the evening of May 29, 2003, Hayden was smoking crack with three other folks at a trailer park home on Chain of Rocks Road in Granite City, Illinois. Murphy, Sr., who had sold drugs to Hayden several years earlier, showed up later that night. He was friendly at first, but he soon called Hayden a “snitch female dog hoe” FN1 and hit her in the head with the back of his hand. He said he saw her name in discovery materials from his son's criminal case and that she was responsible for putting him in jail. He put a gun-a small chrome-plated one-to her head and said he was going to kill her for putting his son in jail. He said this would be her last night and her body would be found in a ditch. Murphy then placed several calls, telling Hayden he was calling his people to get someone to dispose of her car.

FN1. The trial transcript quotes Ms. Hayden as saying Murphy called her a snitch female dog “hoe.” A “hoe,” of course, is a tool used for weeding and gardening. We think the court reporter, unfamiliar with rap music (perhaps thankfully so), misunderstood Hayden's response. We have taken the liberty of changing “hoe” to “ho,” a staple of rap music vernacular as, for example, when Ludacris raps “You doin' ho activities with ho tendencies."

In other words, considerable time was spent discussing the meaning of "ho" and Ludacris is cited as a source or the common usage of a word. Hi-lar-i-ous.

Sadly, this is not the most humorous pop culture reference by a judge in an opinion. In response to a motion that a judge clearly thought lacked any merit, the judge proceeded to borrow a rant form one of my childhood movie favorites by stating:

Or, in the words of the competition judge to Adam Sandler’s title character in the movie, “Billy Madison,” after Billy Madison had responded to a question with an answer that sounded superficially reasonable but lacked any substance,

“Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I’ve ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response was there anything that could even be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

Deciphering motions like the one presented here wastes valuable chamber staff time, and invites this sort of footnote.

(Judge Leif Clark, Bankruptcy Court for Western Texas)