The Supreme Court has fired a sharp salvo at an all-too-common nuisance in civil litigation: endless pleadings that sprawl, meander, and drag everyone—judges included—into a quagmire of excess verbiage. Even worse? The creeping infiltration of AI-generated statements masquerading as human precision.
The bench didn’t mince words. “Every word that is not a help is a hindrance,” it said, calling out the growing tendency to bury courts under heaps of repetitive, confusing paperwork. In a poetic jab, the court invoked both Abraham Lincoln and Shakespeare’s Polonius, to mock those who say much but mean little.
It’s not just about clutter. The consequences are real. When trial courts are bogged down with bloated pleadings, appellate and revisional courts inherit the mess. The justices called it a “cascading effect” — a legal landslide triggered by excessive prose. A plaint runs eight pages. A reply doubles it. Then come hours of oral evidence, followed by judgments as long as novellas. All of this, the bench warned, could have been “captured in a nutshell.”
The court urged the judiciary to lean more on Order 6 Rule 16 of the Civil Procedure Code, which empowers judges to strike out irrelevant, frivolous, or abusive pleadings. In other words: cut the fluff before it clogs the system.
The rise of AI-generated pleadings—algorithmic attempts at advocacy—added another layer of concern. While tech can streamline processes, the court warned that robotic verbosity often disorients rather than aids. If we’re not careful, the machine may flood the system with words devoid of legal soul.
This sharp critique came during a tenancy rights dispute under the Bombay Rent Act, where the justices—after trudging through a saga of eight-page plaints and 16-page rebuttals—couldn’t help but wonder: was all this really necessary?
The takeaway? Litigation needs a facelift. Less is more. Brevity is wisdom. And courts are well within their right to wield the red pen. As the bench put it: a stitch in time saves nine—and possibly, the sanity of everyone involved.
