Lawyers Reveal The Biggest Case They Regret Winning (r/AskReddit | Reddit Stories)

serious lawyers what's a Casey regretted winning family lawyers are little different in that you never really win per se you may get more favorable rulings or better terms but unless the opposing party did something illegal or mind-bogglingly stupid it's never a decisive win really although I did have a case where my client fought really hard for the dog and then ended up turning him over to a shelter freakin [ __ ] the ex-wife received an anonymous tip and was able to get him back quickly so the fight wasn't even for the dog it was just to take something she loved away from her Jesus divorce really can bring out the absolute worst in people it really can but there's the other side too I've had couples who genuinely cared about the other person's well-being and wanted me to make sure they were provided for I've had clients who let their partner keep the pets even though had killed them but they knew how much they meant to the opposing party there's good and bad in all of us we choose which we want to be as a personal injury attorney I've seen a few clients win the blue collar lotto or getting more money than they reasonably know how to deal with I do my best to educate them but my job is to try and maximize their recovery not teach them finance I have definitely contributed to a few de Garrett's as a personal injury attorney do you still represent them if you think they are faking that's a reasonable question the answer is that I'm not a doctor I refer people to doctors I trust if I don't think a doctor is being honest then I won't work with that person anymore I do have one client that I have refused to represent again because I'm not sure he isn't causing accidents on purpose did it divorce where the husband who I was representing wanted to trade custody of his children for a set of bedroom furniture a bedroom furniture was not even like a family heirloom it was furniture that you could probably get at a room's to go or something still makes me oh that's why I got out of family law thank goodness he fought for the furniture and not the kids if that's the kind of dad he would be choosing objects over his children prosecuted a murder case 21 year old kid starts dating an older guys ex-girlfriend the older guy will roughneck loose connections with a local biker gang was going all over his small town talking about how he was going to kick the kids ass the elder guy sent some nudes of the ex while he's getting drunk at a bar so the kid says something smartass in response older guy comes to the kids else to fight him the kid shoots him once and the elder guy dies jury didn't buy self-defense or Castle Doctrine convicted a voluntary manslaughter 20 years burned up his appeals with no luck I have a son about the kids age I could totally imagine him doing the exact same things if he were in a similar situation he's going to haunt me until I die no doubt about it started thinking about other work the moment the verdict came back women wanted her daughter custody we used the state preference about custody going to the mother judge bias her improved economical situation and some minor garbage like her grades and discipline problems at school to discredit the dad not even a month after we won the mother calls and says she had a problem then she explains the problem was that her bfr ped the girl and after that she had the gall to ask we pick up his defense one of the things have made me quit to guv work that poor girl her mother has totally failed her was representing the government at a social benefits tribunal the applicant was an autistic man who was struggling to make ends meet but was trying to his absolute best to contributes everything he could to society he had a job where his manager was very accommodating and he was a very sympathetic person he just wanted the extra cash to make his life a little easier for himself sadly he didn't qualify for the benefit but I think he deserve it my closing argument was that no matter how much we empathized with this man no matter how deserving we thought he was he simply didn't qualify in the tribunal had to apply the law he was unsuccessful and when I left the building to head back to my office he was just sitting outside on the curb crying that image has stuck with me for a few years pretty heartbreaking there was a case that I saw that involved a claim with fee-shifting meaning that if the plaintiff won their attorneys fees would get paid by the defendant defendant pushed an aggressive legal position at trial that the judge agreed with and won avoiding a few thousand in liability to the plaintiff and a few thousand in attorneys fees so far so good but then the plaintiff appeals all the weight of the state's High Court requiring a ton of briefing and time High Court agrees with plaintiff reverses and sends back to the trial court which now enters judgment against the defendant for a few thousand in damages against the plaintiff and tens and tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys fees from the appeal the defense lawyer probably regretted winning at first on that aggressive argument to the trial court guy lost his wife and children in a car accident he wanted to exercise to get his emotions and mental health back in check doctor wrote him recommendations for exercise equipment ball she nutbar nothing crazy and he submitted the expenses for same to his insurer client insurer adjuster wanted this fought tooth and nail because exercise equipment was only covered for physical rehab and he was not physically injured I do not practice in this area anymore it always amazes me when I hear of someone spending probably several thousand to fight paying a few hundred I once witnessed a legal battle over $65 that probably cost both parties 10 - 30 times that and due to the nature of the organizations involved it wasn't like they were going to be legal expenses awarded to the winner I actually asked WTF don't we just pay the complainant sixty five dollars out of our own pockets and call it a day double quote had this happened to me twice got my client out on bail only two they're off to have him up and killed first time he was in building supposedly selling got chased by the police and a struggle in sealed away he was shot point-blank in the head mother told me that it was my fault that he was killed in that I was working with the DA and the police second time a young man no more than 16 gets released while waiting trial on robbery one of the conditions of release was that he maintained a curfew that very night he breaks curfew goes over to somebody else's house and was killed in a DRG related robbery mother blamed me and said that the devil was working through me that we were all demons criminal defense is a hard business I did some custody work early in my career and won some cases more on the merit of my trial skills than on the merit of the parents the thing with family law work in general is that there is essentially no bar to entry anybody with a law degree and a pulse can get a family law practice up and running quickly because there is just an absolute glass of work what that also means is that 75 percent plus of the lawyers practicing family law are clueless and awful early in my career I certainly was clueless but at the least I was not awful therefore in a battle between clueless plus awful versus just clueless clueless usually one so yeah I can't recall any specific cases except to say that fighting over children in court is a terrible thing and basically everyone loses I regret that entire portion of my career my xgf did family law right out of college in of all places one of the sh t s-- towns of the state and the work was brutal emotionally I'm guessing part of the glut of work would be the lack of people who would want to stay in the field at least after some practice I'd be more willing to defend a corporation from a lawsuit than to have to every day with parents lying manipulating and slinging sh t at each other while using their kids as a means to their end soul-crushing she didn't last long she's a sweet girl and moved to immigration where she's much happier I want a summary judgment motion that my firm filed not expecting to win we had a decent argument but odds were way worse than a coin flip and judges don't like granting summary judgment because it's an extreme remedy client initially was thrilled case is over we tried to break the news gently nope three years later we're back in the same spot we were before we won our motion the other side appealed it up to the state Supreme Court and won because the Supreme Court said that trial judge should have denied our motion so we are back at square one north of $100 K in legal bills with no resolution maybe it'll settle maybe it will go to trial I'll find out in the next 3-4 months Peter clarified my parenthetical I wouldn't say I regret as so much as to this day it amazes me as a first-year associate I was given a terrible PI case where my client received a flu shot and they're off to felt pain in his shoulder he went to another doctor who performed an MRI and determined he had a torn rotator calf which was undoubtedly not related my job was to allege the flu shot caused the rotator cuff tear our although actually correlated that to which is the more regrettable position and the case paid out being the bottom of the totem pole I had no choice but to take the case which was handed down by a partner but at the same time just overwhelmingly made me feel like the worst stereotyped attorney and just hated having to walk into court on it and feel my reputation being destroyed and to think I couldn't find an attorney to take my case when I was at the ER with upper abdominal pain at 39 weeks pregnant and the doctors refused to check my baby even though it's a giant red flag for preeclampsia my baby was dead by the time I woke up the next morning despite this I was told by two different attorneys that I didn't have a case because there wasn't enough evidence that my baby would have been okay had they taken him that night I work in medical malpractice defense as I had obstetrician gynecologist who burned a patient during a procedure when I met with the doctor he lied to me throughout the representation over 16 months saying he had no idea how it happened there is a doctrine in law called res ipsa meaning ups and some sort of negligence this accident could not have occurred woman came in without a burn and after the procedure a woman left with a burn there's no way this doctor didn't know what had happened the area of the burn was where he was operating on it wasn't until I brought up settlement because this was not a case we could win did he say oh maybe I do know what happened we ultimately settled that case which is considered a favorable outcome considering the potential high monetary verdict sometimes I think this Doc's are really old to have lost that case on their license I got a spoiled brat of a teenager cured of a shoplifting charge when he absolutely had done it his rich parents hired me to represent him I did that to the best of my ability and we went to trial and won but I can't say I felt good about it this kid needed to be taught some accountability for his actions and his parents just wanted to buy their way out of any trouble he got into right now in my criminology class we're doing reports on criminals and I chose mine on Ethan couch basically his defense said that he suffered from a flumes or a non medical term where a person was raised so rich that they don't know the difference between right and wrong so essentially Ethan drove under the influence at 16 years old with a BAC of 24 and hit and killed four people the defense said that he suffered from affluenza or whatever and the jury was like well sounds good to me I laughed when I first heard the case because I didn't think it was real I'm a work comp attorney now represent injured people but used to work on other side insurance defense there was an applicant with a serious injury fell off a ladder busted back with fusion shell defect years of treatment internal issues psych issues really just flicks up fifty percent plus permanent disability we were five years and and finally getting to settlement time we bought out his future medical settlement pretty far into six figures this guy was the sole provider for wife and two kids then we found out he had an aggressive brain cancer expected only couple years to live at best thus we wouldn't buy out future medical any more still got permanent disability for sixty dollars cash but can't give medical buyout based on 25 plus year life expectancy anymore I felt terrible for the guy in his family me and the adjuster tried to get insurance to agree to some sort of amount like five year buyers but the bean counters said hell no the attorney knew it wasn't me making the decision even though he worked on that guy's file for five plus years he decided to take zero dollars in fees I have so much respect for that attorney turning down $10 k plus in fees to help his client in a very TTY situation I do family law and I represented a father who had lost most of his custody from heroin use and imprisonment as a result he came to me saying he was clean and doing good and had his life together and had checked out he had been clean for almost nine months not counting jail time and seemed sincere and wanting to resume a full relationship with his son the other side fought viciously to keep him at extremely little custody and supervised dat that but we prevailed and got an order restoring fairly frequent unsupervised partial custody not long afterwards only about three months after the case he was back doing heroin sold most of his furniture and for me the most soul-crushing is that he set up a fake GoFundMe stuff for his child's cancer his child didn't have cancer and has never had cancer so you know where that money was going I withdrew my appearance at this point so I don't know what happened afterwards but I imagine and hope his custody was taken away basically the net result of winning that case was that the poor boy had to witness his father elapsed on heroin and was exploited for money worst case I ever won little late to the party but I've got one I still think about a lot worked in criminal defense represented a guy in a DUI he had prize so another conviction men time lot of license problems long story short he was pulled over by police after they followed him leaving a bar had trial I elicited admissions from the arresting officer that during the to 5 miles he followed him for he did not observe a single moving violation no speeding erratic driving driving over the lines blowin stop signs running red lights didn't even stop suddenly at red lights also got the dred officer to testify that the accused only spoke Spanish and they couldn't get an interpreter officer to the roadside to explain the field sobriety exercises which the officers documented the accused refused to perform jury came back in 15 minutes guy was extremely grateful his lovely family was very gracious in thanking me and our office feel good about the whole thing couple months later I'm in County to meet with a client and I see him in one of the pods find out sometime after the trial he violently s-surely assaulted his eight-year-old stepdaughter think about that one a lot I helped a man regain visitation of his child after a year or so in jail I thought I was a great humanitarian Oh hubris that comes from being a baby attorney as we were shooting the sh t after court waiting for his ride he showed me his prison - two giant letters on his torso that spelled war white Aryan resistance I'm a blue-eyed blonde so I guess he thought I was down with the cause close bracket I went home and threw up settled a personal injury case for a guy and he was set to get about five thousand dollars he was in jail I held the money for a couple months and when he got out he came by to get the money without delay the next day the cops came around and asked if I knew him I explained that I did I was told he died that night of an overdose and the only thing found on him was my card some diksha had not yet used and a needle if you win a case you are not supposed to win under the law it means that the judge or the other attorney screwed up and it's difficult to feel bad about that it also means that the decision likely will be appealed which makes it hard to get excited about an upset win source and lawyer shadowed on a personal injury case their client was drinking in one of our guys bars and gets wasted becomes abusive to staff and then storms out falls down the stairs c6 aja being complete spinal injury severe loss of mobility and sensation his people sue and we force them to accept contributory negligence and personal liability he gets an OK payout that covers his legal fees and immediate needs and his left disabled even if it was seen to be his fault it was still hard thinking that his life will never be the same just because of one rowdy night spinal injury care is massively expensive and the money he received wouldn't be sufficient for his whole life the one I particular hated happened at my first law job this woman was a long-term client of my boss in the past ten years or so she has been caught driving under the influence eight times violated homeland car serration countless times been caught with controlled substances a few times and stabbed two people on home incarceration my boss at the time was the master of getting people off for duis so she had only been convicted of a DUI third and always managed to stay on home incarceration with whatever releases she desired I always regretted her cases because that woman is truly a danger to the public she's undoubtedly going to kill someone someday but I'll be damned if she isn't the luckiest woman alive and getting away with DUI's guy was a convicted felon so couldn't be in possession of any firearms he pawned two guns that were traced back to him by the pawn shop paperwork he said they were his imprisonment on the papers also had store clerk say he walked in carrying them his story was that his girlfriend's mom found them after her father died they were his and wanted to get rid of them sue girl-friend also convicted felon asked him to help sell them which he did DA office refused to waive the three-year mean man prison sentence so it went to trial I was the prosecutor when it went and ultimately got a guilty the guy had to do three years day for day I felt bad because I think his story was true but he had a conviction for armed robbery and assault battery from 30 years ago so that was why the office wouldn't agree to reduce the sentence I represented this construction worker in a divorce the wife stayed at home with the kids and had no money through entire divorce her attorney claimed that my client was hiding money they had no evidence and the client vehemently denied it we had a good settlement in the case and I considered it done when they client came in a few weeks later to pick his file he thanked me for my work and said and she never did find the money I had he had a big laugh and walked away what a D CK I'm a paralegal not a lawyer I worked very closely on a case where the client had violently appeared their spouse it was clear from the beginning that the client was mentally unstable and very capable of doing the same type of thing again we ended up winning because the victim was a young woman her demeanor during the trial was atrocious and the jury with all the older men not really winning but I recently had a case settled where my client was so obviously lying it was painful he was in a fender bender and said he was too disabled to drive or to work at the office as a result and that his employer fired him after he had been on disability leave for almost a year a few months after filing we discovered that he played in a National Amateur full-contact football league and there was footage of him getting tackled endzone dancing and tackling during the time he claimed he was too hurt to sit at a desk even when I confronted him on it he claimed he hadn't played while he was injured son despite having a stat line and footage of him playing from games dated on days he was supposedly getting physical therapy we didn't settle for as much as most of my cases but he still walked away with like $20 K I'm happy to be a plaintiff's attorney for the most part because my clients have typically been wronged but he was such a bald-faced liar at really peace ed me off eeyew lawyer here child s zulu harassment case it was the defendant of the mother and children their father was the abuser he didn't are pay them he was touching them and making them play with him and staff I put all of my effort into this we lost at the first trial and then we won of the appeal court the freaka got six years of jail time served for he is now out where is the regret she is together with him today a children are 13 and 10 and they are fully aware of what has happened I regret because I had kind of seen it coming when she started suspecting the harassment she didn't do much still maintained her afternoon work shift while she had a choice to work mornings and left him alone with the children for hours she moved out of the house four months after her first suspicions from the harassment during the trial she often wept and needed psychological support because she felt responsible for destroying the family I am fully aware that a mother's victimization can happen I cannot forgive that after almost seven years three years battling at Causton for years jail time she is today with him makes me want to vomit and burn every cent I earned from the case I handle employment cases we took a disability accommodation case against a regional retail company to be clear we were right our client was not being given a pretty easy accommodation normally demand letters don't have any real effect we have stopped sending them to streamline the process and have just started filing with the eoq or the courts directly that's up for us in this case we followed sup and filed with the eoq the company got in touch with us immediately expressing horror and regret the whole thing was one poorly trained manager acting out while that's commonly companies usually try to cover for the manager and often make things worse this one did not they immediately sent him to be retrained offer the exact accommodation requested and paid all lost wages and fees with some extra for emotional distress client happily accepted and went back to work after seeing the company's great response I felt bad for taking them to the ER not bad enough to start sending time wasting demand letters again but if I ever see them on the other side I'll make an exception I helped represent a slumlord in a lawsuit regarding discrimination in public housing based on disability the state was representing the disabled tenant the facts were pretty clear slum law discriminated on the basis of disability our state doesn't have much case law regarding discrimination and housing based on disability so the state was really hoping to get make case law we ended up sowing enough doubt to survive the tenants motion for summary judgment knowing that the tenants needed money we made an offer for a decent amount of money for a disabled tenant but peanuts for the slumlord I imagine the state wanted to proceed to trial but the tenants needed money and accepted by gaining the best outcome for our client we allowed the slumlord to get off basically scot free and deprived our state of needed case law my first case as a lawyer was a probate case husband and wife each had three adult children from prior marriages husband killed wife and then killed himself I represented the husband's estate the kids all hated each other wife's kids obviously blamed the husband for killing their mom and the husband's kids blamed the wife for making him crazy enough to kill himself the husband had multiple properties and was a prominent attorney before the murder-suicide we had multiple walkthroughs of the property with both sets of kids and lawyers and needed sheriffs there each time because the kids were threatening to kill each other constantly case lasted three years nobody won I've posted about this before I defended a death case representing the insurance company a man had a brain injury due to a car accident and died six months later his family sued my client I've never seen a lazier effort on behalf of a plaintiff the plaintiff firm immediately handed the case over to a junior associate she barely did anything with it we had settlement negotiations but they were way too high considering the lack of actual medical evidence they had come up with to link the death to the car accident it probably was related but you can't walk into court with that argument and no evidence to support it that seemed to be their plan on the eve of trial I told OC to accept the settlement but she refused I told her she would lose because I was going to get all of her evidence thrown out still they went to trial the partner that was supposed to be there with her didn't show up because his dog was sick no joke as I predicted all of her evidence was thrown out the family was crying I won but I didn't feel great about it the judge was appalled I'm sure the firm was sued for legal malpractice the young associate was gone within weeks we settled a case for several million dollars for a girl whose father was killed the mother who was divorced from the father tried every way possible to get the money but it was placed into a blocked count until the girl turned 18 the day she turned 18 mom told her they were going to transfer the money to a better account mom transferred to her own account and fled the country without a daughter screwed her own kid over for money and essentially made her kid in orphan money does horrible things to people but not since no regrets here but we have a client dad full physical custody whose ex recently proposed terminating her parental rights if our clients would wave back child support so she could get her $500 tax refund he's a great dad this woman shouldn't even be considered a mother what is regrettable is that his kid has to grow up eventually learning what their mother is like represented someone in the sale of a bar buyers of the bar were only buying the business most of their free cash was set as assigning payments to the seller so seller got the cash whether or not the Liquor Authority approved their license they allowed the seller to secure the sales contract and the rental agreement for the bar location with a lien on their license and buyers pre signed an agreement to surrender the license back to seller if they fell behind on payments inventory was sold separately we got buyers to accept tax liability if any for the proceeding business we also told them the seller had only paid themselves and dividends and never cut a pay check to themselves buyers were clueless enough to breathe a sigh of relief at this made buyers acknowledge they received the sales agreement ten days before closing and that we were advising their consult an attorney and an accountant in that time they didn't one of the most one-sided business deals I've seen buyers came back two months later and I thought here we go nope they had a disagreement with some investors and wanted me to represent them sorry conflicted out business of course failed on down the road and the license went back to the seller [Music]

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Id: heGr79SNFLE

Length: 30min 55sec (1855 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 29 2019