High Lord Asks High Courts to Revive Old Grudge Suit

The petition reached the High Courts on the ninth, bearing the usual number of pages and the usual number of grievances. It asks the nine High Justices to revive a lawsuit High Lord Donwald of the Golden Towers filed against Lady Hillara of the Deleted Scrolls, the Blue Donkey Convocation and assorted others, alleging they conspired to smear his first campaign with tales of Damaran collusion. The suit has been dismissed, appealed, dismissed again, and sanctioned.

A word on procedure, since nobody else will give one. A petition for review is not an appeal. It is a request that the High Courts agree to hear an appeal, which they do for roughly one case in a hundred. Donwald's scribes asked for extra time twice. High Justice Clarion Thomme granted the first extension, moving the deadline by a month. The second took it to the ninth. Time, as the petitioners understand it, is flexible. The statute of limitations is not.

That is the actual argument. The Eleventh Riding Assize found the claims were filed too late and also had no merit, a belt-and-braces ruling. Donwald's counsel now contends the clock should have stopped while he held the High Seat, and again while various agencies were looking into the conduct in question. By this reasoning the limitations period is an enchanted hourglass that pauses whenever the plaintiff is busy. I checked the Chamber's rulebook. There is no such hourglass. There is a footnote suggesting someone once wished for one.

The Assize also upheld sanctions of roughly 938,000 gp against Donwald, his lawyer Alinara Habbeth of the Gilded Bar, and her firm, calling the suit frivolous and brought in bad faith. Their phrase, not mine. My colleague Grashka Ironjaw says the sum is a rounding error to a man with solid-gold plumbing. Grashka is wrong. Plumbing has resale value.

I asked a courtier who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to be awake whether the High Courts would take the case. "Their docket is full of guns, climate, and religion," the courtier said. "This is the one with the old grudge." The courtier then fell asleep, which I took as a comment on the merits.

For the ledger: Promises Made, forty-one. Promises Kept remains at the one about wearing a long red tie. The gentleman from the Golden Towers told a chronicler this month that he regrets appointing three of the nine High Justices, because they "voted against me often." He now asks those same three to hear this petition. It is the first time a litigant has sent a letter of regret and a request for a favor in the same satchel.

The Clerk will circulate the petition for conference. In eight days or eight months, a notice will say the High Courts decline to hear it. The notice will be one line long. It will be the best-drafted document in the matter.

— O.V., from the gallery