Law Humor

In a recent 31-page decision resolving a thoroughly ugly divorce, a frustrated Canadian family-law judge said he had resorted to ridicule in a final effort to get through to the parties, though it may also have been an effort to keep his own sanity. "The parties repeatedly have shown they are immune to reason," Judge Joseph Quinn wrote. "Consequently, in my decision, I have tried ridicule as a last resort."

Doesn't matter to me when you get to the ridicule, as long as you do.

Judge Joseph Quinn wrote that the problem in the case before him was simple: hatred. "[A] hardened, harmful, high-octane hatred. . . . Here, a husband and wife have been marinating in a mutual hatred so intense as to surely amount to a personality order requiring treatment." As just a couple of examples, Larry seems to have enjoyed driving by Catherine's house and giving her the finger, and Catherine once tried to run Larry over with a van, "always a telltale sign that a husband and wife are drifting apart."

Sadly, these people had children, who they seem to have freely manipulated as part of their ongoing battles. Larry is described as having a "near-empty parenting toolbox," while Catherine provided the kids with "advanced animosity tutoring." Also charming: an incident in which Catherine texted her daughter while she was visiting her father and asked, "Is Dickhead there?"

Dickhead's penchant for the middle-finger drive-by also resulted in a good quote: "A finger is worth a thousand words," the judge wrote, "and therefore is particularly useful should one have a vocabulary of less than a thousand words."

In the end, Judge Quinn granted sole custody of the daughter to Catherine, but ordered Larry to pay just $1 a month in child support.

I know there are many other great quotes in this opinion, but the PDF copy that I got here seems to be corrupted. Do any of you Canadians (or non-Canadians) happen to have a copy you could send me? This really belongs in the archive.