Yiddish For Lawyers



"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 defense attorneys 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 plaintiff's original and supplemental statement of undisputed
facts.' The plaintiffs' attorneys, not to be outdone, responded with a motion
that could double as a primer on practical Yiddish for lawyers....

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
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MONICA SANTIAGO, Plaintiff,
v.
SHERWIN-WILLIAMS COMPANY, et al.
Defendants.
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Civ. No. 87-2799-T
PLAINTIFF'S MOTION TO STRIKE IMPERTINENT
AND SCANDALOUS MATTER
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 Defendant's Rule 56.1 Supplemental Statement of Disputed Facts
(a copy of which is attached hereto as Exhibit A). As grounds therefore,
plaintiff states:

1. 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 plaintiff's responses to
discovery requests. This has been the source of much tsoris among
plaintiff's counsel and a big megillah for the Court.

2. Now that plaintiff's counsel has, after much time and effort, provided
defendants with a specific and comprehensive statement of plaintiff's
claims and the factual basis thereof, defendants' counsel have the chutzpah
to call it "dreck" and to urge the Court to ignore it.

3. 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, NY 1968) p. 103.

Second, defendants are in no position to deprecate plaintiff's counsel in
view of the chozzerai which they have filed over the course of this
litigation.

Finally, since not all of plaintiff's lawyers are yeshiva bochurs,
defendants should not have assumed that they would all be conversant in
Yiddish. WHEREFORE, plaintiff prays that the Court put an end to the
mishegoss and strike "dreck."