On Tuesday, a panel of the Third Circuit reversed and remanded an order of a district court judge who had simply copied verbatim the appellee’s proposed opinion in the case. Here is an excerpt from the Third Circuit’s opinion:
Judicial opinions are the core workproduct of judges. They are much more than findings of fact and conclusions of law; they constitute the logical and analytical explanations of why a judge arrived at a specific decision. They are tangible proof to the litigants that the judge actively wrestled with their claims and arguments and made a scholarly decision based on his or her own reason and logic. When a court adopts a party’s proposed opinion as its own, the court vitiates the vital purposes served by judicial opinions. We, therefore, cannot condone the practice used by the District Court in this case.
Good stuff. To make matters more interesting, the Third Circuit’s published opinion includes both the proposed district court opinion and the district court’s order as an appendix so you can compare the two yourself. (According to the Third Circuit, the appellant raised the verbatim copying argument as a ground for reversal only in a footnote.)
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