Lawyers Share Stories Of The Opposition Making Huge Mistakes (r/AskReddit | Reddit Stories)

lawyers has there ever been a time the opposing counsel accidentally proved your case for you and what happened I had a hearing where the opposing party offered an updated contract that my client supposedly signed except it was a horrible copy and barely readable then he assured the judge that the new contract was exactly the same as the old contract except for the party name at the top the original contract was in his mom's name the new one in his name and the date of the contract itself he made but assurance multiple times after he exhausted himself saying how everything was the same I then pointed out to the judge that half the provisions were different in that my client had never signed that form the judge asked if we were really accusing him of forging my clients signature since that's a serious accusation I held up the guy's prior conviction for contract fraud and said I absolutely am your honor we won hands down no further arguments needed Rowe those guys were either incredibly stupid or stupidly confident in their skills of trickery I had a misdemeanor possession case I was defending client was driving his mom's car he gets pulled over for playing the stereo too loud there are pills in the center console in a prescription pill bottle the bottle has his mom's name on it client gets arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance without a prescription case is obviously bullsh t but the dumbest DA I've ever met and my life won't dismiss we go to trial during closing arguments the DA says this case is a circumstantial evidence case during my closing I slapped the jury instruction on the projector that says if a case is based on circumstantial evidence and there is one factual scenario that points to guilt and one that points to innocence the jury must find in favor of the defendant and acquit my client was acquitted edit r.i.p my inbox also there are some amazing discussions below that makes me really happy I responded to as many questions as I had time for DM me if you have a legal question about this case lots of you were entrusted so the jury instruction is Cal cream 224 if you want to look it up I had to go to court over a financial cock-up when I was a student took advice from the University legal support team who said I didn't need a solicitor so I went in alone the judge didn't like this and postponed it for another date so I could prove I'd had more counsel first the other party's solicit had caught me outside the court and said I didn't tell you this but and pointed out a huge error in the financial paperwork that made it very obviously come out in my favor went back to legal support got confirmation that it was right went to the second hearing alone and got the entire thing thrown out the other solicitor went at me as he left saved me about you a huge 9k nice chapter what a great act that lawyer solicitor had every right to argue their case and try to win but instead made sure a kid didn't get screwed a plus person not a lawyer but a relative of a retired prosecutor relative was working misdemeanor criminal court cases get called in alphabetical order and two women named Catherine Smith and Catherine Smith were scheduled to have their hearings before the judge not their actual names but you get the point comma both had similar crimes but slightly different so the bailiff announces the next case to the courtroom Catherine Smith for one count of possession of cocaine with the intention to sell and one count of prostitution so Catherine Smith stands up and indignantly cries whoa whoa just wait a second where the hell did the prostitution charge come from in a deal crack but I am NOT a wh re easiest drg dealing case my relative ever prosecuted actual lawyer here from the full for a client file was interning at legal services after 1l dealing discovery work for family law my supervisor invited us to observe a hearing for our client to get a restraining order against her husband at the hearing the client discussed various times he threatened her the man representing himself interrupted and said Judge I never said any of those things if I had she wouldn't be standing here restraining order granted you just know in the guy's head he was like it's gonna be so badass when I say this and you also know that when he now tells this story to his buddy he says something totally different and then gets docked over by the judge not a lawyer but here's a story from the burbs my buddy is in the middle of a situation like that right now his psycho neighbor built a wall too high and doesn't have proper drainage on his property for the very small Creek natural drainage in between their yards my buddy hired an attorney as the psycho decided to sue him over it my buddy's engineer that looked over the property noted not only did my buddy set his yard up right but the neighbor created drainage problems neighbor hired his own engineer that proved my buddy was correct now the guy is likely to go postal case was going to go to mediation since both engineers found fault with the psycho neighbor my buddy decided he's going to take it to trial turn the tables a bit Coulomb comer will post a follow-up if I can find this read after the trial wraps my favorite is a story from gerry spence for those who don't know he is a famous trial attorney a witness on the stand was claiming that he had suffered injuries to his arm because of a city bus accident jerry asked him to demonstrate to the jury how far he can lift up his arm after the accident the witness makes a feeble effort of lifting his arm and Jerry asks the witness to demonstrate to the jury how far he could lift up his arm before the accident he lifts his arm much higher the jury laughs the case is over edit spelling I am NOT a lawyer but witnessed a pathologist win a case in court by destroying the defense's credibility the question was over whether or not carbon monoxide poisoning could have caused certain signs of death in an individual but the defense didn't study their chemistry very well and kept asking the pathologist where the carbon dioxide could have caused these signs after thoroughly frustrating the defense by answering his questions incorrectly the pathologist said very loudly oh I'm sorry did you mean carbon monoxide because that's a completely different thing completely destroyed the defense's credibility in front of the jury they were done after that so I guess the opposing counsel screwed himself by not picking up a book edit for clarification this is not the only reason that lawyer didn't win there were a lot of other things that didn't work out in his favor but those were technical things that he probably knew about ahead of time this was a case where he was asking a question that he thought he was going to work out in his favor but it worked against him because he made a basic chemistry mistake that he honestly should have caught yeah I know he's not a scientist but you don't have to be a scientist to remember the difference between those two things getting terminology correct is part of his job it's not like anyone caught a felony charge solely because he said that one thing wrong I worked as an intern for a lawyer construction law in France are quite strict in regard to the neighboring of historical monuments the city was denying a permit for heavy modification of the house of our clients they were arguing that because you could see the house from the churches bell tower modifications were impossible as a support they kindly linked us to a 360 picture from said bell tower we as kindly pointed to them that our clients house was indeed not visible from the top of the church building permit was greenlit the following day WTF anything that can be seen from the church bells tower can never be renewed that city will slowly disappear as buildings collapse in time not a lawyer I know comment but my parents were in a lawsuit where this happened they owned a business and on the either side of it were businesses as well their neighbor to the left Souness claiming that we had been using their property without paying them or without permission that we were essentially trying to adverse possess it we got a severe to come in on the surveyor said that not only we'll be using all of our property but we had been paying rent of the lawn about 20 feet that was also our property obviously they weren't happy so they got their own surveyor who gave us 50 feet we won the lawsuit now their little patch of property has a rusty fence all around it with keep out signs everywhere it's about 20 X 10 feet when I first started my firm had me on a case where the client claimed he lost because of ineffective assistance of counsel basically saying that the old lawyer didn't do his job so we prepare an argument based on not asking the right questions not communicating etc we think it's going to be a tough case but not unwinnable then we get the response to our complaint where the old lawyer argues that he was only ineffective because he didn't have time to prepare for the case and only reviewed it the morning of the original trial he had known about the case for months by the way the judge saw this and during the trial we had essentially asked his enlist the definition of ineffective counsel not giving enough time to your client the silence from his side of the court was amazing needless to say the trial didn't last much longer than that thanks opposing counsel I get you were ineffective for both of you accidentally proved not often made tactical errors often arguing a case on a vote a recount in front of a judge judge says I'm going with X that's in my favor so I shut up opposing counsel in arguing a different point later suddenly goes back to the earlier point into the Labour's it client also a lawyer says to me don't say anything I whisper back don't worry Wilson planning to judge begins rubbing his nose and looking irritated after a few mins cuts off opposing counsel saying I already ruled on this point Mr Smith me anything to add I replied in the negative and one my motion would it have come out differently I don't know did opposing counsel make it easier for me absolutely my opposing counsel made some off-the-cuff remarks about how their client had to go to another remote office to get all the records they wanted to use against my client that let me know the witness they were trying to use to introduce the records as evidence wasn't actually familiar with the records or the records keeping process in the jurisdiction we were in records were exception to hearsay rule but you needed someone familiar with the creation and maintenance of the records to get them admitted I attacked the witness qualifications to get the records admitted and ended up getting the records excluded I then made a motion for a directed verdict on the grounds they couldn't prove the case without the records and one all because the opposing counsel complained that their witnesses had to go way out of their way to get records for the court domestic violence case where the husband beat the wife senseless landlord tried to evict wife for breach of lease due to the beating landlord claimed wife violated least terns by allowing police to be cooled to property and causing a disruption my argument was that as a domestic violence victim wife is covered under war and the property is HUD subsidized also mdl off as DV protections to landlords canceled during his opening talked about how my client was beaten and the police were called in an ambulance etc I just stood there looking at him when he finished judge asked if I had anything to say my response no your honor I believe opposing counsel has said everything that needs to be said judge smiled and ruled in my clients favor landlord can't evict DV victim my ex-girlfriends father had a case where he brought in a decoy defendant he then asked a key witness for the prosecution to identify the suspect in the middle of court the witness turned and pointed to the decoy defendant who was just a buddy of my ex-girlfriends father and had nothing to do with the case the witness was caught lying with his pants down and the whole thing was hilariously embarrassing for the prosecution turns out even if you're right it's a huge no-no to trick witnesses like this my ex-girlfriends father had to go through an ethics investigation and was suspended from trying cases for a while at it to those asking why was alone no I have no idea but apparently he violated a couple of court procedures and broke a state law an actual lawyer might be able to comment more on it I assume there's some law that the real defendant has to actually be at his own court date and you can't have a proxy maybe when I first started practicing I handled a custody case where my client mum had a problem with dad smoking around the kids I asked him if he regularly smoked around the kids to which he replied that he doesn't smoke tobacco only weed in the house obviously this raised eyebrows as it is illegal in my state he then went into a long diatribe about how he only follows the law of the streets he actually said this and doesn't recognize the authority of the court he was currently in front of needless to say mom got full custody especially after dad was arrested for going to the court services officers house late at night and trying to kick her door in now but work with lots we deal with car accidents and this particular girl was claiming severe whiplash and lower back injuries from a minor rear-end accident some of her injuries were legitimate but she was claiming that her life was ruined and she was unable to function in society she worked as a physical therapy aide studying to become a PT so she knew just what to say but he didn't know what not to post on Facebook she claims she was in constant pain after the accident and couldn't go to the gym the day after the accident there's a pic of her lifting weights hashtag accident can't hold me back she claimed a month of lost wages but there she is in a patient graduation from treatment photo on her works website the week after tge accident she missed 0 days of work she claimed that she couldn't travel anymore and guess who had photos of Vegas strippers all over her Instagram for her sister's 21st birthday she asked for $200 K and she got $9 K for the legitimate injuries and mediation as the mediator laughed at her Facebook feed plaintiff was claiming insurance money because he accidentally chopped off his fingers while cutting bamboo with a machete and the insurance company our clients refused to pay the insured amount during the hearing the plaintiff attorney began to demonstrate with a rolled-up sheet of paper how his client was cutting the bamboo when the accident happened no matter how he tried he could not reproduce the position of the fingers with the alleged cutter the machete the only possible match would be if the plaintiff had deliberately extended his fingers over a plain surface and hacked his own fingers based on this disastrous performance the judge determined an expert opinion and later dismissed the case due to deliberate self-mutilation not a lawyer but I had a legal dispute settled this way had a car crash in which both myself and the other party were driving towards each other both too quickly around a corner and cry a few minutes after the crash another driver who knew the other driver in the crash arrived on the scene and offered to act as a witness despite not having seen the crash in this witness description of the event they started off by describing the roads as totally blocked by hedges with no visibility of the traffic ahead they then went on to describe how they could see my driving as way too fast for the conditions having seen me from miles ahead obviously called them on the contradiction and got the blame split 50 stroke 50 I was on jury duty once and a couple guys had robbed a place so the guy who was robbed was up on the stand and their lawyer was doing the usual questions to clear everything up at the start and when asked if he took an inventory before and after to show the value of what was missing the guy just said oh um no whole case thrown out the window in about half an hour yeah most people don't have an inventory even for insurance purposes that's the part where getting robbed house fires truly suck keep an inventory of your staff at the very least valuables pictures included and back it up online [Music] you [Music]

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Id: tr7ZyCmSavk

Length: 18min 50sec (1130 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2020