That's not pragmatism: that's poor judgement. That's a hack that shouldn't work at all; and if it does, it must¹ cause other problems, such as preventing breaks inside the entire first paragraph, or breaking graphically rather than linewise (that is, you could get the top half of one line on one page, and the rest on the next).

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¹ As in, it's unavoidable if you've implemented layout in such a way.