"He owed me for the councillor, the pettifogger!"

I think Duncan is a pettifogger.

Pettifog is an English back-formation of pettifogger, a quibbler of details.

And what did the cuistre [pettifogger] say about me?"

An opponent calls him "an insolent, mercenary pettifogger," who without jury or evidence sent to the gallows any he suspected of royalism.

Larsen E. Pettifogger: Attorney-at-law in the kingdom of Id.

("Larsen E." is a pun on larceny while the word "pettifogger" means a less-than-scrupulous attorney.)

GINAT had a medium education, and was quite useful to the French in the Grant, through his tact as a pettifogger.

The pettifogger of a second cousin once removed was there to present the claim of that distant person, as next in kin, to the estate of Aurelian Bentley.

He turned instead to the Baez family's civil lawyer, Susan Karten, and exclaimed: "Miss Karten, I have nothing to say to a common pettifogger like yourself."

The pettifogger of Adeline Addams of Newport was there to present the claim of Adeline to the estate, claims based on an irrefutable promise.

However, there is a pettifogger (a lawyer of low status, who engages in mean practices) present who besmirches Tom's name to the landlady, Mrs Whitefield, after Tom has left their company.

The marriage, the pettifogger said, had been scheduled to take place on a certain night after the presentation of an opera, that was contained in a television drama, that was contained in a riddle.

Fields' character in this film would inspire the authors of the comic strip The Wizard of Id to create a shady lawyer character, a Fields caricature named "Larsen E. Pettifogger".

And there was Clarinda Calliope representing herself (as Portia, she insisted, and not as a pettifogger), and she claimed rights by a promise too big and too intricate to be put on paper.

Fitton has been treated harshly by historians, especially Thomas Macaulay, who dismissed Fitton as a "pettifogger" without legal ability or commonsense and unfit by reason of his imprisonment for forgery for any office.

I also learned that about this time Richard Hobson suddenly rose from the position of a penniless pettifogger to that of an affluent attorney, though he was engaged in questionable speculations far more than in the practice of law.

So that thousands of poor English people trembled before a mysterious chieftain with an ancient destiny and a diadem of evil stars, when they are really trembling before a guttersnipe who was a pettifogger and a pawnbroker not twelve years ago.

Among other facts, I learned that immediately after the settlement of the estate, Hugh Mainwaring had disposed of the same and left England for America, while about the same time Richard Hobson suddenly rose from a penniless pettifogger to a position of affluence.

Columnist Emmett Tyrrell wrote the following about the report: "When Barrett completed his report the Clintons' lawyers, led by that legendary Clinton pettifogger, David Kendall, tried to kill off the report either by gutting it with redactions or by getting it buried altogether.