Pennsylvania judge who gives verdict in verse finds his rhymes out of tune with the times

Judge Michael Eakin does everything he can to ensure that people who come before him receive poetic justice. So much so, the Pennsylvania state supreme court judge even uses verse to make his opinions clear.

He recently heard the case of a woman who sued her former husband for fraud after finding that the engagement ring he had told her was worth $21,000 (£13,000) was a fake.

Judge Eakin's colleagues in the state's supreme court found against the woman, but he disagreed, writing: "A groom must expect matrimonial pandemonium/ When his spouse finds he's given her cubic zirconium/ Given their history and Pygmalion relation/ I find her reliance was with justification." And in a case dealing with a pre-nuptial agreement, Judge Eakin rejected a husband's effort to have the contract rescinded. He wrote: "A deal is a deal if fairly undertaken/ And we find disclosure was fair and unshaken."

The judge has argued that he is not trivialising the law and that he would only issue a rhyming judgment if the case merited it.

"I would never do it in a serious criminal case. The subject of the case has to call for a little 'grin and bear'," he told The New York Times. "You have an obligation as a judge to be right, but you have no obligation to be dull."

But the judge's poetic efforts have not pleased his colleagues. When he wrote a judgment last month in the form of seven quatrains, he was berated by them. Judge Ralph Cappy said – without resorting to a hint of rhyme or meter – that "every jurist has the right to express him or herself in a manner the jurist finds appropriate". But he added: "[I am concerned about] the perception that the public might form when an opinion of the court is reduced to rhyme."