The bad news about the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals' decision Monday in the case Zerega Avenue Realty Corp. v. Hornbeck Offshore Transportation Co. is that the opinion was not written by Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Drat. Suits & Sentences was chomping at the bit to know Judge Sotomayor's unique take on admiralty law.

But the good news is that the opinion by Judge Jon O. Newman deploys a nuanced word one doesn't often see. The word: allision. As in:

"The damages were awarded because of an allision between Hornbeck’s barge and a bulkhead  on Zerega’s property abutting Westchester Creek in Bronx County, New York."

It's not a typo. But neither is the word "allision" found in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition.  But with a footnote, Judge Newman helpfully cites to a 9th Circuit case that defined allision as:

"A collision between a moving vessel and a stationary object."

Now, Judge Newman might have used the word "collision" and he would not have been wrong. But by using the word with the more narrow meaning, he served the dual purposes of technical specificity and language expansion.