not a truffling matter

I had to laugh when I read the West Headnote of the Day from Gardner v. First American Title Ins. Co., 218 F.R.D. 216 (D. Minn. 2003):

Judges are not like pigs, hunting for truffles buried in briefs, and judges need not excavate masses of papers in search of revealing tidbits in support of litigants' motion, not only because rules of procedure place burden on litigants, but also because their time is scarce.

Although the headnote suggests that this district court opinion was the original source of this amusing comparison, the judge who wrote it in fact quotes and cites two circuit court cases as his sources:

While Plaintiffs seem to imply that the Court should have helped them carry their burden, “[j]udges are not like pigs, hunting for truffles buried in briefs,” United States v. Dunkel, 927 F.2d 955, 956 (7th Cir.1991) (per curium), and “need not excavate masses of papers in search of revealing tidbits--not only because the rules of procedure place the burden on the litigants, but also because their time is scarce.” Northwestern Nat'l Ins. Co. v. Baltes, 15 F.3d 660, 662-63 (7th Cir.1994) (Easterbrook, J.) (emphasis added).

Gardner, 218 F.R.D. at 218 n. 2.

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