Does it sound professional and grammatically correct?

I'm not an attorney, but the sentences are too damn long. Keep it simple.

This first sentence:

1. The judge opined that the testimonial and documentary evidence in the record, before him, viewed in the fairest light, demonstrated against what has been averred, that which is being a claim by the defendant lady that circumstances and facts support a finding of mitigation under Penal Code Section 52-871(b), in respect of mistreatment as defined therein and as such conduct was directed to, and applied to, the victim, a young female.


-- Is grammatically "correct" for the most part. It has a long string of prepositional phrases and adjective clauses at the end of the independent clause to make it extremely long. It would sound better and would be more intelligible if it were broken up.

"that which is being a claim by the defendant lady"
--

This part I do not understand in the least. After the comma are two dependent making words that indicate a relative clause coming up: 'that' and 'which'. Only one is necessary; two makes it redundant.


Furthermore, directly after this are two BE verbs right next to each other. One is a present tense BE verb "is," the other is a progressive participle "being". This implies that whatever "that" is, it is in constant application. Deleting "being" would clear it up.

Next, "defendant lady"? I have no idea what that means. It sounds like slang. Would it not be better to say "female defendant?"

There is a comma in front of "before him," I do not understand why: before him is in no way an interrupter, so get rid of it.

So, making the sentence look like this would be worlds better:


"The judge opined that the testimonial and documentary evidence in the record before him, viewed in the fairest light, demonstrated against what has been averred, which is a claim by the female defendant that...blah blah blah..."

--

Ah...much better sounding. It might mean something a little different, so I might also suggest adding in another verb around the word "claim" and "defendant"...so that the defendant is actually making the claim. Since there is no verb, it is only implied in the writing.

--

Now, on to the second sentence:


2. It having been viewed after the evidentiary hearing, and upon motion that the claim of mitigation by the stepmother be demurred upon in view of the evidence, it is found that cruelty was established by a preponderance of the evidence, in this being a civil case, and as such the claim of mitigation must be denied.

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This sentence is, as far as I can tell, correct. However, by using multiple progressive participles the author keeps the text going and makes it completely confusing. It would be much more efficient and intelligible to break it into two. For example:

"It having been viewed after the evidentiary hearing, and upon motion that the claim of mitigation by the stepmother be demurred upon in view of the evidence, it is found that cruelty was established by a preponderance of the evidence. This being a civil case, the claim of mitigation must be denied."

--

Ah, I feel much better with that...whew. It sounds better; it is structurally more comfortable; AND it makes more sense by ridding the useless comma and deleting useless prepositional words.


Hope that helps.

Re: Does it sound professional and grammatically correct?
I think Owennu3 has some good advice. In general, this kind of English legal writing tends to use too many passive constructions and relies more on the subjunctive case than normal English writing. Also, there is the strange legal jargon that is not found anywhere else in English.

1. The judge opined that the testimonial and documentary evidence in the record, before him, viewed in the fairest light, demonstrated against what has been averred, that which is being a claim by the defendant lady that circumstances and facts support a finding of mitigation under Penal Code Section 52-871(b), in respect of mistreatment as defined therein and as such conduct was directed to, and applied to, the victim, a young female.

My suggested re-write:

1. The judge opined that the testimonial and documentary evidence in the record before him, viewed in the fairest light, contradicted what had been averred, i.e. defendant's claim that circumstances and facts support a finding of mitigation under Penal Code Section 52-871(b), regarding mistreatment, as defined therein, which was inflicted upon the victim, a young female.

English, unlike many other languages (e.g. German) doesn't always differentiate occupations according to gender. Thus a male defendant and a female defendant are both called "defendant." Compare that to a male "waiter" and a female "waitress."

2. It having been viewed after the evidentiary hearing, and upon motion that the claim of mitigation by the stepmother be demurred upon in view of the evidence, it is found that cruelty was established by a preponderance of the evidence, in this being a civil case, and as such the claim of mitigation must be denied.

There's not much I can do here without knowing some more details. What is the "it" referred to in the first sentence? The evidence? Also, no one would say that a "motion had been demurred upon." A "demurrer" is a motion (or, at least, it still is in some places), so it would be more appropriate to identify the party that introduced the demurrer (in this case, presumably the plaintiff). My tentative re-write, then, would be:

2. After hearing the evidence, and upon the plaintiff's demurrer to the stepmother's claim of mitigation, it is found that cruelty has been established by a preponderance of the evidence, this being a civil case, and as such the claim of mitigation must be denied.

Hi Owennu3 and joefromchicago. I thought that if I wanted to clearly understand your opinions and rewritings, I should be calm and be clear-headed. But in recent days things didn't go smooth, I encountered minor traffic accidents in a row, not easy to calm down as usual. That is why I replied so late.

My intuition told me the rewritings are much clearer than the original ones. Still, I think I have to read your opinions more carefully. I will do so later.

Thank you.

Legal writing is never simple, and often badly written. Just look at the LSAT practice tests. :wink:

Often badly written? Very interesting. I supposed that is because they pursue the best accuracy and have to ignore rhetoric when it is impossible to make both perfect.

Legal writing, as it should, always tries to specify completely in order to delete any sort of ambiguity, which, I feel, is a near impossibility in the English language.