Let’s say you represent a condo board. The board has forcibly removed at least two mezuzot from the homes of Jewish families in the building. The families sue, claiming intentional discrimination in violation of the Fair Housing Act. The condo board claims it is just enforcing a neutral rule. In your reply brief, you are looking for a literary allusion to describe what you believe is the illegitimate request the plaintiffs have made for money damages. Perhaps it would be wise not to suggest that the plaintiffs are [like Shylock] trying to extract a “pound of flesh” from the defendants.
(See Judge Diane Wood’s dissent in this very interesting case.)
UPDATE: I see from the comments that David Lat beat me to it, with a rather similar, albeit shorter, post on Friday. David apparently heard about this case through an item on the WSJ law blog, but I saw it at Haaretz.com (which I can’t link to because the site seems to be down).