Let’s say you’re a lawyer, drafting a complaint over some institutional squabble at a public university.  You’re bound by the codes of professional conduct and general ethics, which among other things require that a lawyer avoid demeaning or humiliating language in describing witnesses or adverse parties.  Do you insert this paragraph?

Instead of defending the integrity of excellence of scientific work at UM, all individual Defendants, as administrators, participated in jeopardizing the reputation of the institution.

Or this one?

Instead of defending the integrity of excellence of scientific work at UM, all individual Defendants, as corrupt administrators, participated in jeoparding [sic] the reputation of the institution for personal gain and aggrandizement: something that the ALUMNI and the MISSISSIPPI LEGISLATURE may find of interest.

Apparently, if you’re the attorney for Dr. Robert Speth, formerly of the University of Mississippi school of pharmacy, you choose the second paragraph.  Legal ethics codes also bar extortion and threats (outside the context of the litigation, which is always threatening) and while this isn’t extortion, the language dances rather close to the edge of a threat, doesn’t it?

In any event it is, as folo from which I found this, points out, some of the most unprofessional and abusive language you’ll find in any complaint.  And while the Bar of the Great State of Mississippi likely won’t take action (Mississippi has bigger issues), this may come back to haunt its drafter, Christian Goeldner, in the event that the case is dismissed.

Filed under: Mississippi