It is reported that in a 1999 federal case heard
in Boston, defense counsel responded to a motion from the plaintiff's attorney
as follows: "It is unfortunate that this Court must wade through the dreck
of plaintiff's original and supplemental statement of undisputed facts."
Whereupon, plaintiff's attorneys shot back their own Yiddish-filled response.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
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MONICA SANTIAGO, Plaintiff, v.
SHERWIN-WILLIAMS COMPANY, et al., Defendants.
Civ. No. 87-2799-T
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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:
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 gonsah
megillah for the Court. 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.
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, 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 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 this mishagass.
-Forwarded by
Larry Gorfine of San Diego
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