Here's what I was about to write yesterday about this opinion before I ran out of time and had to teach class (and then meet with students afterwards during office hours):
"Here's the first paragraph of this opinion. Can you tell who wrote it?
'A case within a case can arise when a legal malpractice suit accuses lawyers of poor work. The main case is the malpractice suit: were the defendant lawyers’ performances deficient? The case within the case is whether the lawyers’ performances mattered. If the underlying suit on which the lawyers worked lacked merit, then their alleged malpractice could not have had an impact, because the client would have lost anyway. The issue is causation: whether possible malpractice could have caused harm. (See Viner v. Sweet (2003) 30 Cal.4th 1232, 1239–1240.) This appeal follows that pattern.'"
I also had some tangential comments about the merits of the case, but whatever I ran out of time. In any event, merits aside, I was surprised that I was able to figure out who wrote the opinion -- which I scrolled down to right after reading the first paragraph -- even before I looked at the caption to see what district it was from and even before I read anything else.
But then, today, I read this opinion, which had the following opening paragraph:
"A labor union moved to intervene in an environmental dispute about the Port of Los Angeles. The union is the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Locals 13, 63, and 94 (the Union). The trial court denied the motion because concerns about expanding the case’s scope outweighed the Union’s interest. We will introduce the many actors and events in this multipolar environmental dispute by using the allegations of the petition filed by South Coast Air Quality Management District (the Air District). Then we explain why denying permissive intervention to the Union was proper. Statutory references are to the Code of Civil Procedure."
At which point I thought: "Hmmm. I'm pretty sure I know who wrote this one as well. Same person as yesterday, right?"
And then, when I saw the next paragraph, I was certain of it:
"The Port of Los Angeles is the busiest seaport in the Western Hemisphere. It is critical for U.S. trade with Asia, and there is a lot of trade with Asia."
I honestly can't put a figure on precise why this jurist's writing style is so unique. Sure, in the last of those paragraphs, there's the whole "short, pithy statements of obvious fact that are kind of funny" thing going on, and that's a dead giveaway. But those first paragraphs don't have much of that, yet, still, of the 100+ justices on the Court of Appeal, you can pretty reliably figure out which one is writing stuff like that even from a single paragraph. (Or at least you can after a while, if and when you read every single published opinion over the years.)
Anyway, it's a unique writing style that's not mine, but that (mostly) works for me as a reader.
It's this jurist, by the way. If you didn't already know.
