COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A Columbus-area judge said Friday that he resorted to poetry to dismiss a lawsuit about a prisoner soiling himself rather than simply write that it was a "sh--ty case."

Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge David Cain said in a phone interview that a staff attorney had suggested using the crass phrase to reject the $2 million suit.

But Cain decided to have a "bit more fun" and spent a couple of hours, including a lunch break, composing 20 lines of verse instead. (You can read the full poem here or at the bottom of this post.)

"I got a lot of mileage out of this," Cain said. "Maybe I ought to try to continue with this and try my efforts to be poetic."

The judge released the decision Thursday, in response to a lawsuit filed last month by Darek Lathan, an inmate serving a 17-month sentence for vandalism. Lathan claimed that a guard would not allow him to use a bathroom, and that he soiled himself as a result.

Cain, 72, said that he and other Franklin County judges often see inmate lawsuits and that they mostly have no merit. When asked whether he thought he was being insensitive to the prisoner who filed the suit, he conceded that "I guess I added insult to injury, didn't I?" He added that he was not concerned.

"I suppose some people say it's insensitive, but then again, after 29 years on the bench we get a little bit jaded," he said. "Maybe it's a little bit insensitive, but so be it."

Cain took the bench in 1987. He was last elected in 2012 and is barred from running for another turn because he is over 70 years old.