TS has invented a new award, for what must surely be the most incredible piece of sustained rhetoric ever to hit the profession, and awarded it immediately to Ernst & Young.

‘This is a case where the claim brought suffers from so many defects that it is hard to know which of them deserves pride of place,’ ran the opening to E&Y’s defence against the Equitable Life lawsuit.

TS was bowled over by E&Y’s assertions ­ although this may have had something to do with a few too many martinis when TS met with the firm for a, er, ‘contact-building session’.

Equitable’s claim was based on a ‘theological assertion’, was ‘martinet-like’, ‘over-lawyered’, ‘wholly barren’, ‘truly bizarre’, ‘a waste of time’, ‘utterly misconceived’, ‘far-fetched’, ‘patently absurd’, and ‘the product of misdirected ingenuity.’ E&Y, in case there was any doubt, denies Equitable’s claims.