Depending on one's life view, the character Qyburn in the HBO hit series Game of Thrones is evil, a genius, or an evil genius.

The former "maester" of the Citadel engaged in vivisecting people, and he holds the power to bring back the dead (or at least the moribund). Qyburn once famously brought back a poisoned and moribund Gregor Clegane, the character referred to as "The Mountain." In short, he has mad, resurrection-like skills—and this fact didn't go unnoticed by a US federal appeals court on Thursday.

Qyburn's name, or at least a play off it, has officially entered the US law books. In a published concurring opinion by the nation's largest federal appeals court, two judges from the San Francsico-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the majority's opinion "comes very close to a qyburnian resurrection (PDF) of the Jiffy June standard."

The highly nuanced case concerns police officers citing the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and suing the City of San Gabriel in Southern California over pay and benefits. In its most simplistic definition, the 1972 Jiffy June standard referred to in the qyburnian passage involves a subjective analysis to calculate damages. The two judges who wrote the concurring opinion essentially suggested that the court might have glossed over a 1988 Supreme Court decision that narrowed the Jiffy June standard, meaning the circuit court's case law on the FLSA "is off track."

The concurring opinion was written by Obama appointee Judge John Owens. He was joined in the opinion by Reagan appointee Judge Stephen Trott. Together, Owens and Trott have displayed a daenerysian command of language here, wouldn't you say?