Lawyers are great with words but in the legal family, they do not come anywhere close to judges–especially when it comes to the fusion of Latin with colloquial English.

The legal fraternity sort of has its own language: jargons and terminologies that make no sense to ordinary people. But in this case, even lawyers who are members of the legal family could not understand what the judge was driving at.

According to a BBC report, a “bemused Supreme Court bench sent back a convoluted judgment from a high court judge in the state of Himachal Pradesh to be re-drafted because it was simply unintelligible.”

“We will have to set it aside because one cannot understand this,” MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta were quoted by the Hindustan Times as saying on 14 April.

The judgement was in favour of a tenant locked in a years-long battle with a landlord, yet no one could understand it.

Here is an extract:

“However, the learned counsel…cannot derive the fullest succour from the aforesaid acquiescence… given its sinew suffering partial dissipation from an imminent display occurring in the impugned pronouncement hereat wherewithin unravelments are held qua the rendition recorded by the learned Rent Controller…”

And more:

“The summom bonum of the aforesaid discussion is that all the aforesaid material which existed before the learned Executing Court standing slighted besides their impact standing untenably undermined by him whereupon the ensuing sequel therefrom is of the learned Executing Court while pronouncing its impugned rendition overlooking the relevant and germane evidence besides its not appreciating its worth. Consequently, the order impugned suffers from a gross absurdity and perversity of misappreciation of material on record.”

Apparently, the lawyer representing the tenant, Aishwarya Bhati joked in court that she needed to hire an English professor to understand words of the ruling.

And this happened in India–in case you’ve not picked it up.