Geez

Here is, and I quote, a footnote from my Environmental Law textbook:

“In doing so, those courts replicated the oversimplification of an Old English dictum: ‘Le utility del chose excusera le noisomeness del stink,’ roughly, ‘The usefulness of the thing will excuse the foulness of the pollution.’ The legal French appears to be a version of a line from Ranketts case in 1684: ‘Si home fait Candells deins un vill, per que il caufe un noyfom fent al Inhabitants, uncore ceo neft alcun Nusans, car le needfulnefs de eux difpenfera ove le noifomnefs del fmell.’ P. 3 Ja. B.R. Rolle’s Abridgement, Nusans, 139 (1684). As Boomer showed, this may be relevant to the grant or denial of injunctive relief, but it should not affect a finding on the issue of liability.”

Thank goodness I didn’t try to pursue law school.  Any course where the second class involves an “explanatory” footnote that includes a large portion of untranslated Old French/English is not really the kind of course that I want to pursue for three years.