Language – Quixotic

This adjective is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary (Online) as ‘having or showing ideas that are different and unusual but not practical or likely to succeed’. The dictionary – coincidentally for this legal magazine – gives an example of usage:  ‘Many think these attempts to make lawyers behave are quixotic’.

The Macquarie Dictionary (Online) carries a number of definitions but the core ones are ‘whimsical and capricious:  an unpredictable and quixotic temperament’ and ‘unrealistic and impracticable: a quixotic attempt to allocate resources fairly’.

As the word suggests, it derives from Don Quixote, the literary creation of Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th Century Spanish novel. Such character did not change the world by tilting at windmills but did leave a linguistic legacy!

Examples of usage in caselaw are these:

• Vitzdamm-Jones v Vizdamm-Jones (1981) 148 CLR 383, per Stephen J at [418]-[419]:

The logic of s 61(4) seems clear. If a court, having regard to the welfare of the child, has deprived one parent of custody, it seems appropriate enough that the child should not again pass into that parent’s custody without scrutiny of the situation by a court. But where joint custody has been ordered the same need for scrutiny is not apparent. Indeed it seems quixotic that, pending some new order by a court, the death of one joint custodial parent should automatically determine all custodial rights of the other parent, with whom the child may have been living and who at all events has not been adjudged in any way unfit to have its custody.

• Redbubble Ltd v Hells Angels Motorcycle Corp (Australia) Pty Ltd (2024) 303 FCR 100 per Perram and Downes JJ at [161]:

Thus an award of additional damages the purpose of which was to persuade Redbubble to use computer systems to check all images prior to their upload to the website for deceptive similarity would, on the evidence, presently be quixotic. Redbubble cannot be persuaded to do what cannot be done. Of course, a closer probing of Redbubble’s evidence might have revealed more about its present inability to do impressionistic image matching. For example, it might have been shown that such a system was under development but was proceeding slowly due to the amount of capital expenditure being allotted to it.Comparison with other evidence about how Redbubble was deploying its capital might have made it possible to infer that Redbubble was not pursuing this goal as vigorously as it could.