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Monday, July 17, 2000
There once was a Mechanicsburg jurist.
OK, so I'm no poet. State Superior Court Judge J. Michael Eakin isn't about to make anyone forget Oliver Wendell Holmes, either.
But Eakin -- pronounced "ake-in" -- can get your attention with his rhymed opinions. His latest was filed July 7, and began this way:
Appellee and two little dogs were walking down the street,
tending to business as they went, but soon they were to meet.
It went on for 58 more stanzas. It got better, trust me.
The case stemmed from an accident in the Blackridge section of Wilkinsburg. Around 8 o'clock on a December morning in 1997, Julia A. Zangrando was walking her miniature poodles, Autumn and Angel. A car driven by Jan Sipula hit the latter, sending Angel flying over Zangrando's shoulder. It was a bad scene, and it took veterinary surgery to get Angel back on her feet.
The bill for Angel's treatment, though, was anything but small
and appellee felt that in the end, appellant should pay it all.
So she filed this civil action in Allegheny county court
seeking $1,155 for the nearly fatal tort.
Let's skip past some of the more clunky verses -- even Holmes never tried rhyming "Commonwealth's Vehicle Code" -- and cut to the last page of Eakin's five-page opinion, where he dissected Sipula's arguments.
Fifteen miles an hour he claims as his maximum rate of speed,
quite a cautious, prudent rate, not very fast indeed,
Not fast enough to trouble him or force quick decision:
it shows, had he been paying heed, there'd have been no collision;
For he admits he saw the dogs as he approached the scene,
and didn't know he'd struck a pup 'til Ms. Zangrando keened.
It's also hard to quarrel here with what the trial court said:
That speed's not fast enough to launch a poodle overhead.
And finally:
We must conclude the issues raised do not warrant a new trial
and all that we may offer now is this respectful, rhymed denial.
Zangrando said she doubled over with laughter when she read the opinion in her favor.
"Is that called poetic justice or what?" she asked.
Still, she questioned what she had won. She'd already made her case before a district justice, an arbitrator and the Court of Common Pleas. Each time, the judgment was in her favor, but, "monetarily-wise, I haven't won a thing."
Sipula's lawyer, William F. Askin, said his client might appeal. Sipula is a dog owner himself, and believes Zangrando has some liability for walking in the road. But principle won't come cheap: Sipula's legal bills are already more than the vet's bill.
Eakin, in his fifth year on the Superior Court, figures, "You have to be right but you don't have to be dull."
He issued a rhymed opinion a year ago on a domestic matter -- Conrad Busch filed a timely appeal/ trying to avoid a premarital deal-- and had been looking for a suitable sequel. Angel proved to be his muse.
Eakin had his clerks work up a straight opinion, and then he took it home to his couch to "futz around with it." It took a couple of nights, six or seven hours in all.
"It's good enough to qualify as law if not art," he says.
The last time the judge filed a rhymed opinion, a lawyer asked for another hearing -- with a limerick. That fellow was denied, though not before he managed to rhyme "Eakin" and "mistaken."
Brian O'Neill's e-mail address is boneill@post-gazette.com.
Whose motives were none but the purest.
He penned an odd doggerel
About how a doggie will
Get some big money, he's surest.