“I want one piece of paper in that folder that says, in their handwriting, that she didn’t do it.

I don’t care that they don’t mean it.

She won’t be reading it for their sincerity.

She’ll be reading it for the fact that they had to write it down.”

Judge Halvorsen looked at me for a moment.

Then he said, “That is the best reason I have ever heard for that clause,” and he went and got it done in ninety minutes, and I have always suspected he was somewhat harder on their side than a neutral is strictly required to be.