Judge Gordon channeled a late (and poetic) colleague.

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In discussing the McCourts' credibility, Judge Gordon cited a 1908 Missouri case in which the parties' credibility was also at issue. The text, as it was selected for use in the McCourt decision:

Truth does not always stalk boldly forth naked, but modest withal, in a printed abstract in a court of last resort. She oft hides in nooks and crannies visible to the mind's eye of the judge who tries the case. To him appears the furtive glance, the blush of conscious shame, the hesitation, the sincere or the flippant or sneering tone, the heat, the calmness, the yawn, the sigh, the candor or lack of it, the scant or full realization of the solemnity of an oath, the carriage and mien. The brazen face of the liar, the glibness of the schooled witness in reciting a lesson or the itching over-eagerness of the swift witness, as well as the honest face of the truthful one, are alone seen by him. In short, one witness may give testimony that reads, in print, here, as if falling from the lips of an angel of light and yet not a soul who heard it, nisi, believed a word of it; and another witness may testify so that it reads brokenly and obscurely in print and yet that about the witness that carried conviction of truth to every soul who heard him testify.

Creamer v. Bivert, 214 Mo. 473, 481 (1908).

About a dozen words later, Gordon wrote, "The testimony of  both parties as to their lack of knowledge and attention to the details of the MPA is not credible."

Ouch.
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