Judiciary
Judge Explains Ruling Against Limerick Golf Club With Poem
Posted Jun 25, 2008, 06:54 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A federal judge is using a poem to explain his decision against the Limerick Golf Club on a procedural issue.
U.S. District Judge Berle Schiller of Philadelphia ruled in a lawsuit that claimed the club failed to keep a drunken bar patron from assaulting the plaintiff, Daniel Sullivan. The club sought to implead the patron as a joint tortfeasor, but Schiller ruled the motion was filed too late, the Legal Intelligencer reports.
“Unfortunately for Limerick, their subpar performance occurred in the pleading stage of this case and not on the golf course," Schiller wrote in his opinion (PDF). He then summarized his ruling this way:
With arguments hard to resist,
The movant correctly insists,
His joinder was tardy,
And so the third-party
Complaint is hereby dismissed.
Schiller also was in the news recently for ruling that a receptionist who was fired for refusing to serve coffee to her supervisors can’t sue for sex discrimination. Schiller wrote an opinion dismissing the case that referred to the “brewing” controversy.