Now this is my kind of judge

What do you do if you’re a Tacoma, Washington judge and a lawyer files a 465-page racketeering lawsuit you don’t have any interest in reading?

You write a limerick, of course!

“Plaintiff has a great deal to say,
But it seems he skipped Rule 8(a).
His Complaint is too long,
Which renders it wrong,
Please rewrite and refile today.”

Of course the English-major geek inside of me went nuts when Judge Leighton drew a rare comparison between Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In his four-page order granting the defendant’s motion for a more definite statement, he wrote that brevity, in addition to being the soul of wit, is the soul of a pleading. “The Court recognizes the tension between Rule 8(a), which requires a ’short and plain statement,’ and Rule 9(b), which requires the party state his claim with particularity,” wrote Leighton. “The Complaint does not correctly balance this tension.”

So how did the voluminous complaint break down? For starters, Judge Leighton noted that the title to the complaint is eight pages. (Eight pages!!!) Next, the plaintiff uses eighteen pages to list six defendants. “On page 117,” wrote Leighton, “Plaintiff embarks on an odyssey through his claims for relief. While the Court understands that asserting 54 claims requires some space, the 341 pages used to do so is unreasonable.”

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