I was reading a decision by Judge Thomas Moukawsher dealing with a contract claim against the city of Hartford, where he noted that a summary judgment motion turned “on the pinch of Fennell,” referring to a 1996 case that went by that name. I thought the cooking reference was clever. I started reading the judge’s other decisions and discovered a wonderful trove of language. They bring to mind “Novels in Three Lines,” a collection of faits divers—literally “diverse things”— authored by Felix Feneon in the French newspaper Le Matin in 1906.

Feneon has been described as a “dandy, anarchist, a critic of genius, the discoverer of Georges Seurat and the first French publisher of James Joyce.” Feneon’s—and Moukawsher’s—genius was and is an ability to summarize the facts of a legal matter quickly, accurately and in an entertaining manner. For instance, Fenenon’s report of a love triangle: