Three appellate court judges decided to turn their opinion in a defamation lawsuit into a “teachable moment” for an attorney who complimented the appearance of the female trial judge in the case.

In the opening paragraph of an appellate reply, the defendant, Keith Chow, and his lawyer Jan Stanley Mason referred to now-Associate Justice Gail Ruderman Feuer, who was a Los Angeles Superior Court judge at the time, as “an attractive, hard-working, brilliant, young, politically well-connected judge on a fast track for the California Supreme Court or Federal Bench.”