Spell-checking on his computer is never going to be the same for Santa Cruz solo practitioner Arthur Dudley.
In an opening brief to San Francisco's 1st District Court of Appeal, a search-and-replace command by Dudley inexplicably inserted the words "sea sponge" instead of the legal term "sua sponte," which is Latin for "on its own motion."
"Spell check did not have sua sponte in it," said Dudley, who, not noticing the error, shipped the brief to court.
That left the justices reading -- and probably laughing at -- such classic statements as: "An appropriate instruction limiting the judge's criminal liability in such a prosecution must be given sea sponge explaining that certain acts or omissions by themselves are not sufficient to support a conviction."
And: "It is well settled that a trial court must instruct sea sponge on any defense, including a mistake of fact defense."
Details here from The Recorder via Law.com.
This reminded me of a Motion to Quash I dealt with a few years ago. "Quash" is a funny word to begin with, but counsel had filed a correctly captioned "Motion to Quash Service of Summons." About a third of the way through the brief, however, counsel started referring to it as a "Quashal Motion." Quashal?? And by the end of the brief, counsel was calling the motion a "Petition for Writ of Quashal." WTF? I was in hysterics! An everyday motion to quash suddenly starts making grand statements like: "For the foregoing reasons, the Court must grant defendant's Petition for Writ of Quashal"!!
A bit of Googling reveals two things: First, "quashal" is an antiquated version of "quash" no longer in usage, except, apparently, in the Philippines. Second, Googling "Petition for Writ of Quashal" returns zero hits. So apparently that grand phrase was invented by counsel out of whole cloth. It sure worked for me!