Lawyers, What Was Your “Oh Crap” Moment in Court?

lawyers of reddit what was your oh crap moment in court mine actually happened while i was sitting in the jury pool during via dire the case was a double homicide and the jury pool filled the entire courtroom if you are not familiar with via dire it is when the lawyers ask the potential jurors questions to determine who they want to sit on the jury and who they want to exclude it is a long and boring process for almost everyone involved but 9 stroke 10 it's the most important stage in a case so the lawyers are asking us questions and if that question applied to you you raised your hand and they handed you a microphone to answer the question the question asked was do you or anyone you know have prior knowledge of this case so this elder gentleman raised his hand is handed the mic and proceeds to say yeah i work at the police station as a janitor and i heard two detectives talking about him points to defendant and they were saying he was about as guilty as sin we all kind of stared open-mouthed like this guy and i started chuckling because i couldn't believe what i was seeing naturally the defense attorney asked to approach the bench followed quickly the by the state prosecutor after some quick and energetic whispering the judge addressed the man do you realize what you just did you potentially poisoned this entire jury pool i will be calling your boss and you will be hearing about this you can count on that you are dismissed sir but this isn't over the man was escorted out and then the judge addressed the remaining jury pool which was still in a mostly packed room now i want you all to disregard what that man just said i'm sure if any of you were ever accused of a crime like this you would want a fair trial and not be condemned based on the words of one old man i have been in court many times since but never have i seen that level of downright jaw-dropping absurdity again was in court for a directions hearing the judge was already in a bad mood and asked why we were here for such a seemingly pointless litigation without giving details he was right the barrister starts to make our case and i am taking note about areas we need to further explore when i hear excuse emmy why were you so rewarded to emmy the client who had been told to not come had come to court that day and was evidently incensed by the judge questioning the merit of their case they berated the judge for about three minutes with me and my counsel first stunned and then trying to shut them up before he adjourned the hearing but the case did not go very well to my client surprise and fury big sigh ahahahahahaha those are always the ones who are totally shocked when it doesn't go their way we were prosecutors then 18 year old defendant applying for bail he needed a residential address and got his dad to show up at court to confirm that the family home was available to him defense lawyer gets old dad to confirm that son can stay at family home dad says yes my fellow prosecutor gets up and asks dad do you really want him home dad goes off the deep end jesus the grief he's brought me and his mother out all hours taking drugs hiding stolen property in the garage all night parties i'm on antidepressants and the wife's had a nervous breakdown dad goes off on one for five solid minutes as the defendant gets taken back to the cells he calls out thanks dad i owe you one obligatory i know but in a pre-mediation meeting once for an uninsured motorist claim an insured had alleged that she couldn't walk without the aid of a cane and had a pronounced limp after an accident due to a low back injury and a shooting pain in her right leg the doctor notes didn't support anything but a subjective injury after a few weeks but she was still treating two years later and going to new physicians so we had her followed covertly to see if she was really using the cane and had a limp etc we got footage of her carrying like four grocery bags in each arm to her car in a walmart parking lot walking perfectly fine when she got to her car she even opened the trunk of her suv without putting any bags down and lifted the gate with her knee pathway her elderly mother was with her using a particularly decorative purple cane with a flower pattern on it they followed her to a doctor appointment an hour later and she's on video using her mother's cane and walking with a limp that would give forrest gump a run for his money but never did follow up on how that played in the mediation but i can only imagine it gave some attorney an oh crap moment my grandfather was a pie it's amazing how freaking dumb people are when it comes to insurance fraud person i was representing was on trial for assault and the third degree in dui in my state a3 means you've assaulted an aid worker or police officer and is a felony the allegations are that he was very verbally abusive to the officers and at one point kicked one in the face we're sitting at the defendant's table and the officer is testifying about the statements my guy made to him including some pretty horrific name calling out of nowhere my client screams your freaking liar frick you you son of a bee we lost the trial another time the judge asked a client whether anyone had coerced him into pleading guilty and he said yeah my attorney i about crap my pants but he laughed and said i'm joking number not a lawyer but a defendant as a teenager i got busted with a couple of buddies throwing eggs at cars we were only actually in the courtroom for our sentencing there was no trial the judge called each of us up individually to ask us if we had anything to say one of my friends tells the judge that he is a good kid who doesn't normally do things like this lie we used to do it all the time and that i was just in the wrong place at the wrong time i wish there was a video of my other friend and i sitting in the benches watching this happen but we simultaneously dropped our heads into our hands because we couldn't believe that idiot just said that the judge was not pleased and she took the opportunity to remind him that going to a store buying eggs going to another location across town and then throwing those eggs at cars was not just being in the wrong place at the wrong time i am sorry your honor i uh i didn't know i couldn't do that i'm not a lawyer but i was a character witness for my childhood dog in a civil trial between our neighbors and my parents opposing council was questioning me i wasn't even out of elementary school at the time and he asked if our dog was aggressive she was a rottweiler and very loving and incredibly protective of me and my siblings his final question to me is one i will never forget he asked did your father tell you what to say before you came into court today i responded yes then he asked what did he tell you to say i said the truth now i was too young to remember the courtroom reaction but according to my father the judge audibly go forward in the opposing council lost all the wind out of his sails character witness for my dog has me smiling they're so loyal to us we should return the favor as a law student we were allowed to make court appearances under the supervision of an assistant district attorney i was doing arraignments and my ada said don't talk to the judge unless he asks you a specific question so the judge and the defense attorney were going back and forth about when the next court date would be the judge wanted a specific date let's say 4 stroke 20 the defense attorney was adamant that she couldn't do that date in my file i had a calendar with a big x over four stroke 20 saying do not schedule the judge and defense attorney go back and forth for several minutes the judge wanted four stroke 20 and the defense attorney saying no i was keeping my mouth shut because the judge hadn't asked me directly finally the defense attorney relents and agrees to four stroke twenty the judge turns to me and says do the people agree with four stroke twenty at which point i say sorry your honor but we cannot schedule for four stroke twenty the judge looked at me for a second and then just ripped into me mr jones one you just heard me and the defense go back and forth for several minutes about a date you knew the people can do do you like wasting the courts time it went on like that for a few minutes him just berating me in front of about 200 people in a court in brooklyn finally after me apologizing profusely and him giving me a withering glare we moved on and went to the next case at the next break the judge said mr jones one please approach the bench i thought i was really in for it then i walked up beside the bench the judge came down to talk to me and said with a big smile don't worry about it i was just giving you a hard time welcome to brooklyn criminal court not a lawyer but i had a big oh crap moment i was in court for driving while suspended in a county and in front of a judge that were both notorious for putting people who did that in jail my license wasn't supposed to be suspended a pencil pusher forgot to press a button or something and it never got unsuspended after the time was up i had proof of this but i was still really nervous the guy who went up to the judge before me walked to the table where we were supposed to stand sat down and put his feet up on the table the judge asked him what he was doing and he gave a flip and answer and basically told the judge to get fricked this seriously pee the judge off the judge went off on this guy and the guy gave everything right back to him pee him off more and more the judge ended up jailing him for contempt and had the bailiff cuff the guy and put him in a chair off to the side to await the marshals who would transport him to the jail my name gets called the judge is looking at me like him fresh meat and he is a great white shark i'm already thinking to myself okay if this judge puts you in jail run over and beat the crap out of the guy that pee the judge off so badly he's why you're going to jail the judge looks down at his paperwork and back at me and says you're mr my last name i said yes sir he said yeah we were talking about you earlier i'm going to void your arrest and dismiss this case your license was supposed to be valid and you shouldn't be here i let out a huge sigh the judge asked me if i was okay and i said i had been a bit worried especially given the guy that was right before me in line the judge said don't worry about him he won't be seeing anything that i sent behind bars for about 90 days and laughed that's how a judge is supposed to be not a lawyer but shared an oh crap moment with one i hit something in the road and had a tire blow out while driving home from maps hit a concrete divider and wound up rolling my car no injuries and no other vehicles involved received a reckless driving ticket that the officer told me was just procedure and not to be concerned with fast forward a month and i'm in court with my lawyer who plans on pointing out this ticket could prevent my hardship enlistment he's not expecting it to take more than a minute because the issuing officer and prosecutor are on board q group oh crap moment i'm fourth on the docket and the judge has just handed out maximum sentences for all three prior defendants people are getting six to 12 months having listened says revoked for little stuff prosecutor gets screamed at the instant he opens his mouth police officer is told to shut up while answering a question the judge asked my lawyer is told he's about to be held in contempt i'm starting to think i'm gonna get three squares and a cot just not where i planned on getting them the judge told me to step forward while shuffling my case paperwork and my lawyer just gave me a look that said i'm so sorry case dismissed in the interest of justice and if any more idiots waste his time with nonsense like this again everyone is spending the night in county medical malpractice defense lawyer here representing hospitals doctors this was not my oh crap moment but plaintiff so crap moment for context usually at trial both plaintiff and defendant will have an expert physician testify as to their opinion to whether the doctor hospital performed everything correctly i thoroughly researched plaintiff's expert who was an object baby delivery and found out he had been suspended a number of times for his own botched deliveries and giving incorrect medical testimony to help plaintiff's cases during the actual day of trial turns out he was not licensed to practice medicine independently without supervision from another physician and he was one year into his three-year suspension plaintiff's lawyers had no idea about their own experts background and they just sat there with a blank look on their face needless to say during cross-examination we destroyed his credibility and won at trial i was prosecuting a contempt action in family court something that basically never works and everyone in the room could tell i was winning the other side was unprepared out of arrogance and i was basically ripping this guy to shreds on cross-examination which his lawyer didn't even think would happen because he expected the case to be dismissed at the end of the trial the judge ruled for me and stated that she found the defendant's testimony to be untrustworthy i was shocked at winning a contempt trial to begin with but then this exchange happened defendant's attorney your honor now that you have found my client's testimony to be untrustworthy i am requesting a continuance in order to prepare further witnesses this concept is shocking in and of itself because to even think you can bring more witnesses after you rest your case is laughable judge you had your shot and you missed council defendant's attorney your honor there was no way i could have anticipated that you'd find my client's testimony untrustworthy and as such i didn't have the opportunity to prepare other witnesses in support of his position a judge that may be an argument for your carrier counsel but it holds no water with me but see you this afternoon for sentencing for those who didn't pick up on it the judge basically told the lawyer on the record in front of his client that she expects him to get sued for mal practice because he fricked up so royally that crap was min blowning on multiple levels for those who didn't pick up on it the judge basically told the lawyer on the record in front of his client that she expects him to get sued for malpractice because he fricked up so royally warranted for telling the court on the record the lawyer half assed the defense i've had a couple best one was when i was a youth prosecutor defense attorney in team court the youth defendant was on trial for assault i asked him what happened and he said my friends told me i wouldn't beat up the easter bunny at the mall so i did only time i truly could not control my laughter in court another i was watching a detention hearing in federal court only issue is whether the defendant will get to go home until trial this was an appeal of the court's previous decision that the defendant be held until trial the third witness was an fbi agent which needless to say is not normal at a detention hearing the fbi agent testified that some other attorney not the one representing the defendant at the hearing had been taking letters from the defendant and sending them to different people for the defendant those letters were contracts to have the prosecuting attorney killed the representing attorney withdrew and the defendant was not released pending trial one more i was in traffic court one time and a sovereign citizen who was acting fairly hostile began approaching the judge's bench but he was arrested at gunpoint which was pretty wild considering there were 150 or so people in the courtroom last one my first ever civil trial i was representing the plaintiff who wanted to evict the defendant from her property for non-payment of rent after presenting my case the judge asked the defendants to present his evidence the defendant replied the judge said now is your turn to present your case the defendant said i don't understand the judge leans over the bench and asks why are you here the defendant said oh yeah yeah right the defendant then went on a 30-minute tangent about all sorts of things like how he only parks his car so he can see where he is going when he pulls out because that was taught when he was in the military i could have objected but the more he talked the more the judge disliked him after 30 minutes the judge finally asked about the rent the defendant says oh yeah i'm not trying to debate that i didn't pay it that's how i won my first civil trial not in court but a deposition plaintiff in a gender biased harassment case that was suspected to be paid role play with her boss kept a very detailed frick diary on her work computer at one point she was asked to read from the diary for the record and asked if she had written the accounts and if they were true she was asked at several points if she wanted her new husband to leave the room while she did this but declined let's just say was extremely kinky she confirmed it was true and the only mention of her now husband was that he was boring in bed but she was going to marry him because she couldn't get her first second or third choice he ended up leaving on his own after she read that part out and confirmed it was him she was writing about not a lawyer but i witnessed my ex-wife try to argue with the judge that she couldn't be accused of kidnapping our daughter because our daughter was legally emancipated not a spoiler she wasn't at the time of the kidnapping my ex had legal statutes written on small sheets of paper she had torn out of books in the jail library and she kept arguing with the judge after being told that none of it mattered after the fifth time my ex interrupted the judge with her nonsense the judge slammed her hands down stood up leaned over her bench and told my ex that she had been a juvenile court judge for 20 years and was well aware of the statutes if she interrupted one more time then she would be held in contempt and spent several months more in jail my lawyer held up his folder in front of his face to hide his grin during this exchange i walked out with full legal and physical custody of my daughter court supervised visitation for my ex and a full restraining order i was interning during law school prosecuting domestic violence cases the deputy asked me to talk for the first time during a guy's arraignment for beating his wife an arraignment is when the defendant hears the charges against them and pleads guilty or not guilty basically when the judge calls on me to speak i got insanely nervous and told the defendant that his charge carried a maximum penalty of 30 years when it was actually 30 days he freaks out the crowd some in the gallery were his family and friends gasps the judge basically stops me and says i think you mean 30 days counsellor after which everyone including the defendant laughed at me the evidence was pretty weak and the facts did not bear charging anything other than the lowest level misdemeanor which in conjunction with this being a first offense meant that we were seeking two things primarily counseling anger management classes and probation the intent being that any future problems can hopefully be avoided and if not we could stick the defendant with a harsh punishment the next time when we hopefully have better facts evidence i did jury service back in the 90s in the uk a four-day trial where an estate manager dude in charge of the farms on a big landowner's estate was on trial for growing and distributing cannabis the police had raided the greenhouses and surrounding land and found tons of weed in all stages of production dude claims that he is addicted to cannabis and because his tolerance is so high after smoking so much for so long that he can only get a buzz from the very tips of the plant where the thc content is most intense asks the court to believe that he just discards the rest of the plant doesn't sell it doesn't even give it away just destroys the rest of the crop so it's the last day of evidence where both sides sum up their case and remind the jury of the salient points of what's been said dude himself has been quiet and respectful throughout smart suit softly spoken stuck to his answers i'd say the jury is not buying his claim and as the judge reminds us it's not about whether we think it should be legalized it's not about whether we think he has even sold the remaining bits of his plants all we need to find him guilty is to think that beyond reasonable doubt he had at some point shared a single joint with a friend and that that was enough to convict him for supply on the counts against him so the jury isn't buying his story but we are also looking at him thinking he's quite old isn't doing anyone any real harm etc is unlikely to be running a massive dealing empire then on that last day the public gallery which has been empty all week is suddenly full of the most blatantly stonery stoners you've seen in your life one of them is even wearing an added outer dash t-shirt the jury files in we sit down we look at the public gallery and i think it's safe to say we stare at them defense barrister turns to see what we are looking at invisibly slumps then glows at the solicitor and this is really such an own goal tl dr marijuana farmer fricks up by letting his customers come to court plot twist it was the prosecutor who invited them two high-profile men on trial for killing another guy both ex-cops from the 80s a notorious time in our country for police corruption the first trial had been aborted after one barrister had made a casual comment that the other accused had already killed two or three people second attempt was six weeks into an expected ten-week retrial all of the networks and papers were covering this trial the gallery was always packed with law students because of the many uniquely horrific aspects of the trial so we're six weeks into the retrial defense one gets up to cross-examine a witness did you know of accused murderer one yes he was a cop and a drug dealer in the 80s the court basically exploded the judge immediately issued a non-publication order meaning there was an embargo on all information from that day it was early afternoon but the judge excused the jury for the day then spent the next day and a half deliberating over whether to abandon the trial over halfway through and for the second time the best oh crap moments are when your opposing counsel or opposing client says or does something that wins the case for you true in civil cases you usually know what will happen ahead of time but in my state discovery in smaller civil cases is more limited and clients don't always want to spend 30k dollars when we can get the same result for 10k dollars in an adverse possession case the witness only needed to say i use that area as my backyard and i fully expected him to say this it would harm my case but i knew i could get around it when asked about his use of the area he said no i never really went back there didn't use it at all lost the case for the other side and i could barely keep a straight face it was completely opposite of what the witness had told opposing counsel off the record apparently the under penalty of perjury made him change his story i had another case about losing multi-unit dwelling insurance because a guy's place was a fire hazard i asked him if his personal insurer knew about the fire hazard yeah and the jerks cancelled my policy i also love it when i have a difficult party on the other side and the judge rips them a new one i had a convoluted case with a lot of parties about nothing at all the plaintiff was heinous the six or seven attorneys were working out calendars with the judge when the plaintiff starts yelling at her attorney from across the courtroom because she didn't like that he had conceded some little non-issue judge told her to sit down and shut up i was sad that the case settled because she would have been amazing on the stand coma i also love it when i have a difficult party on the other side and the judge rips them a new one we call that getting bench slapped if you are new to the channel you can subscribe i publish new videos every day until then check another video [Music] bye for now

Channel: Updoot Everything

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Keywords: lawyer, lawyer stories, oh crap moments, oh crap, worst moments in court, lawyer losing, #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, \r, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny reddit stories, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, reddit stories 2019, people of reddit, sub, reddit cringe, memes, toadfilms, updoot everything, updoot reddit, story, stories, rslash, comedy, fresh

Id: 5HcuwRiNafg

Length: 24min 44sec (1484 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020