Ah, finals period, that wonderful time when all law students are crushed under pressure, and some of them turn into diamonds. Others just crumble. And still others take the pressure and sadness and turn it into a brilliant fountain of creativity.

Well, that doesn’t happen very often. But when it does, it’s pretty fun. A law student turned a case brief into a Night Before Christmas poem. It’s funny. I mean, it’s borderline insane to do this with a brief, but it’s pretty funny. Let’s hope our author backs away from the keyboard slowly…

Our guy is a law student at the University of Minnesota Law School. It’s pretty cold up there. I guess we’re lucky this brief turned into a Christmas carol instead of three pages of “All work and no play makes Santa a dull boy.”

Enjoy. The case briefed is Higgins v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 140 Cal.App. 4th 1238 (2006).

‘TWAS THE CASE BRIEF BEFORE CHRISTMAS

‘Twas 2006, in the court of appeal

When California decided to rule on this deal.

The story at hand has some tragic beginnings,

Where both parents had died and left behind these 5 siblings

A family at church made their troubles their own,

And invited the family to stay at their home.

A network caught wind of the troubles they faced,

And offered to build for these kids a new place.

The family from church was briefly consulted

Much less so the kids, which is how this resulted.

For after the studio built them a house

The church family decided to kick these kids out.

The children were shocked and cried “that’s not fair!”

“In the contract we signed, we weren’t told of what’s there.”

In the papers they signed, there contained an agreement

That arbitration would rule when one side sought appeasement.

The trial court said that the signed clause would rule,

And the provision within was judged to be cool.

At this point in the case, this court intervened,

And decided the claims of these children redeemed.

Unconscionability, this court has decided,

Henceforth shall be present with two things provided:

First, the two parties must not be the same

When deciding which terms on the contract remain.

And next all those terms that are contained herein,

Must be oppressive for the plaintiff to win.

The trial court was correct, if as they assumed,

The plaintiff had thought the whole contract was doomed.

But their beef was not with the thing as a whole,

But arbitration, they claimed, was all that was null.

So the court of appeal turned back the dial,

And ruled that this case be remanded for trial.