Dictum of the day, or on unearned hubris

There are good reasons not to call an opponent’s argument “ridiculous,” which is what State Farm calls Barbara Bennett’s principal argument here. The reasons include civility; the near-certainty that overstatement will only push the reader away (especially when, as here, the hyperbole begins on page one of the brief); and that, even where the record supports an extreme modifier, “the better practice is usually to lay out the facts and let the court reach its own conclusions” [...] . But here the biggest reason is more simple: the argument that State Farm derides as ridiculous is instead correct.

Bennett v. State Farm Mutual Insurance Co., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, No. 13-3047, 24 September 2013