PERFORMER | Bruce Lanoil |
DEBUT | 1994 |
Judge D. X. Machina presides over the civil suit of Earl Sinclair vs WESAYSO in the fourth season Dinosaurs episode "Earl's Big Jackpot." The judge is taken aback by the 800 million dollars which the jury awards Earl; when he presides over B.P. Richfield's counter-suit, and the jury awards him the same amount, the judge steps in. He is outraged with how the jury gives "crazy jackpot awards" and he forbids them afterwards in his court. Embodying the term "activist judge," his honor orders Earl to return the money, Richfield to hire back the laid-off workers and lower prices, and when the foreman complains about two love-struck jurrors, he encourages them to wed and performs an instant marriage ceremony, somehow even manifesting cake in the lobby for a reception.
The judge's name is a reference to the Latin phrase and stock plot device of the Deus ex machina, whereby a figure (often a deity) or event suddenly resolves the situation.