Joseph Simon Lord III

Joseph Simon Lord III (May 21, 1912 – April 23, 1991) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Education and career

Born in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Lord received an Artium Baccalaureus degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1933, where he was captain of the boxing team his senior year. He received a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1936. Lord was in private practice in Philadelphia from 1936 to 1961, interrupted by service in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1945. When he returned to Philadelphia after his military service, Lord became a partner in Richter, Lord & Levy. While in private practice, Lord defended several unpopular clients, ranging from Communists during the McCarthy era (who were acquitted on appeal), to Philadelphia's democratic boss William J. Green Jr. He became the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for a brief period in 1961.

One of his favorite stories involved a golf game after the judge (a prominent liberal) issued a decision invalidating parochial school vouchers. When Lord asked Cardinal John Krol (well known for his conservative views) what his handicap was, Krol quipped back, "you are." In Randazzo v. Eagle-Picher Industries, Inc., 117 F.R.D. 557 (ED Pa 1987), Lord famously wrote, "Counsel brazenly, discourteously, defiantly, arrogantly, insultingly and under the circumstances rather obtusely threw back into my face the very allegations I had held insufficient by reiterating and incorporating those same crippled paragraphs. The so-called 'amended complaint' itself cheekily informs me that these paragraphs allege the states of incorporation or principal places of business of the defendant corporations.