There is this big discussion, among people who disagree over whether it's the King's English or American English, whether the word is spelled gray or grey. I've always come down on the gray side, but didn't really care one way or the other. I didn't even particularly understand the difference. I think I do now.

Today is, without a doubt, a grey day.

***

To start with, a friend of mine (the husband of a very good friend of mine), died at 6:30 this morning.

He's been ill for some time, and we knew it was coming, and he wasn't a young person (he celebrated his 75th birthday yesterday), so it isn't a shock.

At the same time, there are people you just get used to being in your atmosphere and around and people you can talk to, and when you realize you can't talk to them anymore -- ever again -- it does something to you.

Also, what does it say about how far we have come when I consider someone dying at 75 relatively young?

***

From the significant to the mundane. I will spend the better (or, more likely, worse) part of tomorrow writing an appellate brief.

Appellate briefs are challenging on so many levels. First, on your first pass through, the tendency is to become despondent because the person who wrote the other side's brief is so intelligent and brilliant there is absolutely no way you can win. Then you buckle down and realize they can e defeated, but only through careful and studious research. (At this point, you say, "Drat!" and look for arsenic. Realizing you have are out, you write on.) Midway through the brief, you begin to think you will win; and as you write the last quarter of it, you simply cannot imagine how anyone would have another viewpoint than you.

There's a great peril in writing an appellate brief, though. You have to think and, more dangerously, write like a lawyer. This can be a bad thing. Writing in legalese is proven to cause lapses into "wherefores," "hereinafters" and even the occasional "insofar." Sentences drag on forever and ever, and you end things with citations that look to the rest of the world like you've quite lost your mind. Engelbert v. Humperdink, 73 N.E.2d 478, 482 (1917)

At the beginning of my second year of law school, I co-wrote a book with my friend Laura, who was not in law school. According to her mother, Laura's head nearly exploded while reading my detailed outline, which consisted of things like 7(a)(ii)(c) subsection (4). While the ending did not depend on dividing the EITC allowance from subparagraph (d) of 501(c)(3) of the Tax Code and ensuring that there were no implications either from ERISA or 17 USC 1983, everyone agreed they liked the parts of the book Laura wrote better. (You can see why.)

***

On the subject of transitions, and a far more superficial and less important one than what I discussed above, tonight is the end of the "West Wing." While it is one of my favorite shows and that's bad enough, I also remember when the promos started in the spring of 1999, during my freshman year in college. (I remember thinking I wouldn't get to watch it, since I was going to take Writing for Mass Communications on Wednesday evenings.)

It turned out I didn't, and I distinctly remember watching the very first episode on September 22, 1999. That was a date of some importance, as it was the night before an election for county commissioner I was running in. (I lost, by the way.)

For some reason, that has created a link. And even as I think it's the best show on TV, I also feel there's a link that ends tonight.

Plus, there's something disturbing about a series ending. Sure, Jimmy Smits got elected President and Josh will be his Chief of Staff and so on and so on, but they all disappear after tonight. And I find that disturbing.

***

On legal writing. You want to be careful that, even though legal writing is generally bad, it never gets too bad, or you will find yourself at the wrong end of an appellate opinion. This was written by Judge William Skow, who was then a Lucas County Common Pleas judge and now sits on the Sixth District Court of Appeals:

As to the first amended complaint the Court cannot but comment that the complaints are examples, in their best light, of notice pleading run amok. The complaints were deliberately overdrawn and vaguely drawn in an attempt to permit the inclusion of later-developed facts. This is not surprising as no factual basis for the original complaints and the first amended complaints existed at the time each was drawn. The Court found the identical complaint wanting in specificity in Tillimon v. Farmer, but no similar motion was filed in these cases, for whatever reasons defendants' counsel may have had. Thus there was no court order to further amend the first amended complaint (as there surely would have been); nor was there any request from the plaintiff (as there surely should have been for leave to further amend). Moreover, plaintiff's first amended complaint is an example of wretched legal draftsmanship. The syntax and grammer are lamentable, the punctuation remarkable, and the meanings consistently obscure. Mr. Rust could start a successful cottage industry selling road maps and flashlights to those foolish enough to enter his sentences at the beginning. Several of them run a full page: forlorn and stranded phrases in vain search of linkage; and marooned verbs gazing through a fog of participles, hoping to find a predicate.

By way of counterpoint, Mr. Bischoff's motions for summary judgment herein are not candidates for any literary awards either. Mr. Bischoff's problem is the reverse of Mr. Rust; that is, he is overly terse. Still, however, his motions do raise the defects of the first amended complaint and the fatal factual shortcomings in plaintiff's case, in at least an adequate manner. Tillimon v. Sullivan, 88-LW-3124 (Ohio 6, unreported) (1988.)

Where I come from, we call that an old-fashioned bitch-slapping.

***

Another thing contributing to my bad mood is that it's been raining and, well, grey, and cold for days now. I mean, the sun came out today ever so briefly and I squinted.