By the standards of the Bronx courthouse, the case was a paltry matter.
Total grosses reached a paltry $6.3 million, no matter the critical praise: "devilishly clever," "shrewdly inventive," and a "sly little comic treasure".
And he trusted his own expertise — no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else's.
In a charged environment, where the state like others across America is looking to make even further budget cuts to an already underfunded system, no legislator has dared propose closing any revenue stream, no matter how paltry.
That the numbers were, in fact, relatively paltry seems not to have mattered.
And although Darwin wrote to Lyell that "I would far rather burn my whole book, than that he or any other man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit," he turned the matter over to Lyell and Hooker with enough hints to help them resolve things favorably for him.
Cameron's "offer", by comparison, was paltry on the core issues that matter most to Lib Dems.
Making matters worse, raises are so paltry that the difference between getting a "4" or a "5" on your review might mean little more than being able to take the kids out for pizza every couple of weeks.
Often gilded, these banquet specialties make contemporary desserts no matter how expensive look a little paltry.
Such defenses, of course, assume that cyber risk is a matter of malicious hackers overcoming paltry defenses.
I think it's a lazy statement in itself, often directed at us by Americans fearful of taking their paltry two weeks' vacation or Asians, infused – no matter what tabloids tell you - with the true immigrant ethos of unrelenting hard work.
