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I'm not talking about the judge being mean to Trump/team -- this is by no means surprising to me.
Just that the language in the ruling seems very casual/bantery -- I love a good legal roast, but part of what makes them great is that they are couched in formal and polite language -- "my learned friend" sort of thing.
I admit I only skimmed the damn thing (it's also yuge) but the bits I read just kept making me cringe -- to drill down, "we are way beyond the point" sounds like something a school guidance counsellor would write; a judge, I'd expect to say something like "It is well past the point where I can compel myself to believe that the Trump lawyers are accidentally coming before this court with the same arguments for the third time" -- arguably even harsher, but not invoking Bill Murray movies nor the royal we.
You must not be familiar with Alex Kozinski, formerly of the Ninth Circuit:
"AIG's lawyers sat around contemplating their navels for two and one half years while the Bank was struggling to build up its good will."
"The only relevant evidence here demonstrates that, had Levolor done every little thing Ada Kern claims it should have, she would still have been laid off. Where, then, is her beef? ..."
"Carter stopped just short of pinning a Boy Scout Merit Badge on Silverman [a key government witness]."
"Miller was a prostitute, heroin user and fugitive from Cana- dian justice; but otherwise she was okay."
""Sex on the Internet?," they all said. "That'll never make any money." But computer-geek-turned-entrepreneur Gary Kremen knew an opportunity when he saw it. The year was 1994; domain names were free for the asking, and it would be several years yet before Henry Blodget and hordes of eager NASDAQ day traders would turn the Internet into the Dutch tulip craze of our times. With a quick e-mail to the domain name registrar Network Solutions, Kremen became the proud owner of sex.com."
"The parties are advised to chill."
And of course Justice Scalia was no stranger to using a similar tone:
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I am saying that what you're complaining about is difficult, if not impossible to expect from the judicial branch. Different judges and assistants etc will all produce write-ups of extreme variance of quality and kind of language, and we're not about to unseat a judge simply because they used excoriating and casual if overly harsh language as opposed to the court room sarcasm we're used to.
That is, "we are way beyond the point" is not a phrase which would cause me to bat an eye, especially in cases where the judges felt one party or other was not playing nice or was turning the court processes into a circus.
I'm not exactly complaining, and certainly not saying I want to unseat the judge over casual language -- I'm saying that I haven't really seen this writing style before, even in decisions coming from some fairly podunk courts.
"This is just what it's like in NY" would be a valid answer or "yeah this particular judge writes like this all the time" -- 'we are way past the point' is just the first example I noticed on a second skim, because I'm sure not reading this thing again. I'm giving my impression based on my first read, not calling for the guy's head.
That said, I guess sloppy language combined with sloppy/insane assertions such as "Mar-a-Lago is worth no more than $25M" could add up to the impression that the judge may be a sloppy guy -- but my impression in that regard will not make much difference to Trump's fortunes in this one.
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