Objection! Best Lawyer Stories of Reddit (3 Hour Compilation)

lawyers of reddit what was your oh crap moment in court sat in on a personal injury case where the plaintiff broke their leg in an accident and had a doctor on the stand as an expert the woman's lawyer begins questioning the doctor about their experience with leg injuries he was a well-known orthopedic surgeon in the area she asks if he's ever treated a tibular fracture the leg bones are tibia and fibula to which he only answers no then she starts grilling him with questions about the tibula after about six seven questions she asks how did you get to medical listens and have been able to practice medicine this long if you've never treated a tibula fracture and begins a small rant about going after his credentials and those that gave it to him to which he simply responds there is no bone named the tibula the lawyer became beat red and everyone in the room tried their best to keep from laughing including the judge oh god i can feel the second hand embarrassment i was representing a plaintiff in a hit-and-run case plaintiff is testifying and is despite me preparing them for several hours the previous day an absolutely terrible witness for her own case like she couldn't even identify the street she was crossing when she was hit by the car it was a major highway and we had gone through the sequence of events countless times the day before the hearing the oh crap moment came during cross-examination defense council pulls out a picture of my client dressed up and ready to hit the club which was posted to facebook the day after the alleged accident i thinking quickly object because the timestamp refers to when it was posted not when it was taken defense counsel show the picture to my client and asked her when the picture was taken sure enough they say it was taken the day after the accident when she was supposedly in unbearable pain oh crap not your fault good thing it happened too it means justice is served when i was in college i was a bailiff guy is on trial for murder first witness testified that she saw the defendant shoot the victim second witness states the same police officer testimony is that he arrived at the scene and defendant was there holding the gun coroner testimony is that the first bullet hit the victim in the arm the second bullet hit the victim in the torso and the third bullet hit the victim in the heart which was the fatal shot defendant yells out see that proves that i didn't kill him i only shot the mother sucker twice i was a baby lawyer in my first year representing the 19 year old child of some rich people in san mateo county ca my client had gone on a bit of a sharp lifting spree and we were cleaning all her cases up with a global plea meaning we handled them all at once being new i filled out the plea form wrong swapping the count she was charged with for the count she was pleading to it's an easy mistake to make every court has their own unique form and i was unfamiliar with san mateos the judge calls my line starts reading off the plea form notices the mistake and then starts screaming at the top of his lungs council what is this what is this is this your first day on the job this is a courty floor and we do not accept mistakes fill this plea for might correctly or i will have you taken into custody for contempt i did not expect a reaction like that my client who had clearly just taken a huge bong rip at 8 am and who was wearing an all pink velvet track suit was looking at me like i was the biggest idiot in the world i corrected the plea form the judge made me wait until the very end of the calendar to take my plea afterward he called me up to the bench in private he told me sorry to ream you like that everyone messes the plea form up so i always pick the youngest lawyer to yell at the elder guys will grumble and complain but if you notice they all fix their own forms and we didn't have any more problems keeps the calendar running smooth where did you go to law school after that he invited me into his office for coffee and gave me some really good life work advice turns out he likes talking to new lawyers tl dr judge losses his crap in court over a simple mistake turns out it was all a show for the other lawyers and i have one of the worst best court experiences of my early career i am stupid i one thousand percent initially thought baby lawyer meant that you were a lawyer that represented babies represented a woman charged with multiple very serious felonies she insisted that in the months before the offense she'd been seriously dating one of the detectives who ultimately wound up investigating and testifying in her case for a variety of reasons i trusted this client and believed her even though the detective never disclosed the relationship in his report so during his testimony i asked detective smith you had a romantic relationship with me defendant correct he goes what no one is visibly offended the judge looks at me like i've lost my mind the commonwealth attorney audibly says what i'm freaking out because a large part of my cross and argument was focused on the bias formed by the prior relationship and now i've got nothing and i've lost all credibility i try again detective smith have you had a physical relationship with me defendant as the commonwealth rises to objection the judge starts to scold me the detective goes oh yay we've had fricked it just wasn't very romantic state is virginia the jury acquitted my client of the relatively minor charge that the detective in my story was involved with big convicted of the other much more serious charges that detective had nothing to do with there was a confession and video on the serious charges so it was kind of a no-brainer sorry i'm being kind of intentionally vague there are no confidentiality concerns since this all happened in open court but it's distasteful to give out too much information about a client the detective was not disqualified his testimony was not thrown out impeachment no matter how good doesn't result in you getting to throw out a witness's testimony entirely by the way it wasn't really the sex that was the issue it was that he didn't disclose it to anyone and his repeated insistence under questioning that he didn't disclose it because it was irrelevant like watergate it's not the crime it's the cover-up that gets you but i don't get to demand the judge throw out the testimony or that charge just because the cop failed to disclose a prior relationship with the defendant i just get to point it out argue it in closing and then hope the jury also sees the relevance oh you mean the freaking yes there was that uk bear with me on this one i was in court listening to the most boring old defense lawyer you've ever seen he was questioning the arresting officer in the case it was drugs or something like that anyway he's droning on about every little detail and the magistrate was constantly telling him to hurry along the arresting officer was getting noticeably annoyed and the room became empty pretty quick everyone was very bored and annoyed he was droning about details that i'm not sure anyone was really listening to or cared about anyway he went over arrest times and the likes with the officer time he admitted the suspect and released him he had bored the officer to the point where he was barely paying attention so he was admitted in at 21 45 on the night in question yes comer and released the night after yes comma and that was what just after 10 pm yes what time after 10 i don't know quarter past 10 maybe so my client was detained for more than 24 hours um wait the penny dropped the officer let his guard down and had revealed he kept the defendant for more than 24 hours which is the max time for detention in the uk the defense rested and the magistrate threw the case out immediately well played sir well played it wasn't me that was the lawyer got called for jury duty was at the jury selection phase and they asked if anyone here thinks they should not blah blah defendant was in the room i raised my hand the defending lawyer looked at me like oh this ought to be good and asked me to explain i suggested i tell them in private he insisted i tell the courtroom i said okay i probably shouldn't be on this jury because i was on a previous jury for this man which returned a guilty verdict lawyer's face went oh crap commotion and a wait while they looked up records yep verified whole jury was now tainted everyone goes home and they start over it sounds like you saved yourself quite a tongue lashing by suggesting that it be in private i was interning for a judge we were in the middle of wardia for what was frankly not that exciting of a criminal case half-day trial expected not salacious details or violence or anything 75 potential jurors in the room and when my judge didn't let a guy out of jury duty because he'd have to pick up his kids that guy proceeded to say in front of everyone that if he was made to show up next week he'd make it the shortest trial ever and find him guilty right out of the gate my judge was an incredibly even keel guy nothing shook him or got to rise out of him and he was an expert at figuring out what he wanted to say in the most neutral fashion possible before he said it conversations with him took forever because there was a pause before every sentence but then but then this guy poisons an entire jury pool of 75 people we had to individually question each person to see if that little outburst was going to affect their impartiality etc 75 in camera interviews later judge pulls the guy back in in front of everybody and begins to scream at him about disrespecting him the courts and every other juror's time me the attorneys and the court reporter go white face because we didn't know this was coming the guy didn't have to sit for jury duty but i still don't know if he got to pick his kids up since he spent a couple days in jail for contempt this is probably why the couple jury selections i've been and they dismissed everyone at the first hint that person seemed like they didn't want to be there including the guy who signed loudly then walked shaking his head to the jury box when his name was called judge instantly moved for his dismissal i was involved in a pretty messy custody case the other party was a mess and had kept the child from my client for a few weeks op was playing lots of stupid games and kept requesting continuances i requested a drug test which the judge ordered however the op didn't show up for it to clarify he did show up he just stood in front of the toilet for literally two hours and claimed he couldn't pee i was representing the plaintiff so the burden was on me i called multiple witnesses that testified to the defendant's drug use so opposing counsel decides to call their client for direct examination and asks you don't use h and crack right that is for the non-lawyers a very stupid question for many reasons especially considering his client didn't show up for his drug test however i fully expected the defendants to just lie and say he was clean after the question was asked there was a really long pause and the defendant said yes i do both of those drugs my head almost exploded i didn't ask any questions on cross-examination because i didn't want to muddy the waters i won and the child is doing great i genuinely don't understand how people are this stupid not mine but my boss is one she had to defend a small time delinquent as duty solicitor before going to court he asked her what he should do she explained to him if he was cooperative and truthful his sentence would be milder after hearing the case the judge asked him if he wanted to add something he got up and explained to the judge my counsel told me to be truthful so i wanted to tell you that i not only did the robbery i'm being heard for but also several others in the region he continued to admit to several robberies that had been unsolved yet and everyone even the state attorney were fascinating i suspect the truth did not set him free [Music] 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 a 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 literally the first thing i ever did was just a law student in turn guy has a legit defense on a drug possession case drugs found in a jacket guy wasn't wearing jacket they were going to have a very difficult time proving the jacket belonged to my guy had a long meeting with client explained everything client was excited day of the preliminary hearing guy shows up and sits down directly in front of the officer who arrested him while wearing the jacket in question the exact same jacket we were going to say they couldn't prove belonged to him not in court bits at a tribunal and also i was plaintiff suing for wrongful termination my rep so you terminated him because he was ill employer yes mr and he was ill because he is disabled employer yes mister so you fired someone for being disabled employer yes 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 the case did not go very well to my client's surprise and fury big sigh those are always the ones who are totally shocked when it doesn't go their way not me but my former law partner she was in court representing a client i think in a hearing for a restraining order against her soon-to-be ex-husband our client was telling the judge that when they met to exchange the children for visitation the ex had kicked her he immediately angrily shouted she can't prove it i didn't leave a mark thanks buddy there was something like this on judge judy when she was asking the plaintiff about items stolen from her bag the defendant quickly jumped in and said something in particular wasn't in said bag busted probably the funniest one i ever came across happened to a colleague 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 two moments in a dui trial one passenger is testifying for drivers sobriety when the door asks her you keep saying he was sober but are you even tip certified of course for bartenders so they can recognize drunk patrons she was two the head of the county's blood lab accidentally admitted he cranked the sensitivity of his machine's way up because he was experimenting on two thanks krieger 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 partway 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 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 in 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 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 ah 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 counsel was questioning me i wasn't even out of elementary school at the time and he asked if our dog was aggressive but 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 guffawed 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 i was at a hearing arguing that my client was wrongfully terminated because the employer failed to abide by the proper procedures during the hearing a witness for the employer tried to offer documents that were fraudulently altered in order to make it look like the proper procedure was followed i noticed the alteration opposing counsel quickly got that witness out of the room and after a quick adjournment my client got a large settlement as a law student we were allowed to make court appearances under the supervision of an assistant district attorney i was doing arraignments and myada 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 20 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 opposing council was a nightmare everything late his work was extremely subpar and so forth accused me of lying multiple times when he had dropped the ball during another hearing in which he did another dumb move judge says i'm glad you are the last case on the call and all of the other attorneys have left the room so they aren't here to hear me say that you are a terrible attorney 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 lawyers over at it what's your best most badass i rest my case moment complaining witness accused my client of harassment stalking said she told him numerous times that she wanted nothing to do with him my client claimed they were dating but whenever she got mad at him she'd call the police and say he was harassing her on the stand she testified that she'd never dated him never invited him into her home wanted nothing to do with him she presented a photo on her phone of him sitting on her porch to prove that he had come to her property i asked the judge permission to look at the photos before and after the porch photo for context a girl had dozens of photos of the guy who was clearly her boyfriend i showed her one such picture this is mister so and so right yes in this photo he's on a bed yes the bed is yours yes the bed is in your bedroom yes you took this photo of him yes he's smiling in the photo yes and in this photo he's wearing your brassiere yes no further questions your honor that's really sad i'm glad she got in trouble for this really takes advantage of a situation no one should have to deal with i was prosecuting some kid he had an anti-social behavior order which meant that he was not supposed to go to a certain street he had pleaded not guilty on the basis that he had not been there i opened my cross-examination by holding up a map and pointing at the street i said to him you went here didn't you he said yes in england we don't say i rest my case instead i looked up at the bench said no further questions and sat down it might not seem bad but but i got the defendant to admit the offence with one question that never happens defendant in a bench trial for a speeding ticket said he couldn't possibly go as fast as the officer clocked him he knew this because he videotaped himself accelerating from a full stop to the location of where the officer sat his experiment showed his vehicle could only get to 55 miles per hour and not the 67 mile per hour he was clocked at the aida then moved to have another speeding ticket issued because the actual posted speed limit was 50 miles per hour five miles per hour over is probably just a fine and a few points 17 over is possibly reckless driving depending on the officer's discretion i'd take that ip lawyer deep in a set of terms and conditions on a website our client's details name and contact details were listed so it is very evident that they just copy pasted our clients legal terms and conditions and missed a couple of details they needed to change i was handed the mata did a quick control plus f for client details and it was an open and shut case not really that impressive it saved me hours of time going through each term one after the other noting exact similarities for a letter of demand welcome to the world of law where we spend millions on technology but people don't know how to control plus f or use a simple spreadsheet it wasn't at trial though we had one of those and i won it easily just always stuck with me because of how clearly the law supported my position to the point that it was inarguable otherwise and also because of how ridiculous the claim of monetary damages was guy moved out of his apartment turned in his keys then came back 15 days later demanding access so that he could retrieve belongings that he had left behind which at that point had been trashed it was just some minor furniture type items lampshade is the only thing i clearly remember and a box of his college notebooks that's his notes he took during class he is furious and sues the landlord and small claims for five thousand dollars state maximum because his notebooks have such huge value apparently they hire me and i respond which moves the case out of small claims it's just the way it works here after time in our legal advice i know this is not the case for every state but our rule is better than yours but enough aside this puts him at a huge disadvantage because now he can't rely on the lacks rules of small claims so he goes out and hires a lawyer the lawyer calls me to try to talk settlement i know her pretty well so i wasn't rude or anything but i kind of scoffed and was like no that won't be happening and direct our attention to a particular state statute then read it out loud to her this statute unlike everything else in the law isn't overly long or worthy or hard to follow it just says bluntly that when someone actually moves out and gives notice of this items left after 10 days are abandoned period end of story i could feel her deflate on the phone and encourage her to dismiss the suit she did not we proceeded to a short bench trial in district court that we won terrible people had stolen all of this little old lady's money they said it was a gift but their only evidence was a document in the bad person's handwriting that was allegedly dictated it said september 2012 day just the month clearly the rogue had forged that when she found out about the lawsuits and not remembering when she had stolen it she hoped if she could guess within the month no one could challenge her so i'm questioning her about it exhibit b is a little old ladies bank record now that withdrawal at the bottom is that the alleged gift yes can you read the date of that transaction for me the 25th of august 2012. thank you this is the most satisfying of the lot cheers pro bono case representing woman who was trying to get a permanent protective order against her boyfriend i ask her if he has contacted her since the temporary order was issued which is a crime she says yes he called her three times defendant objection your honor judge state the grounds for your objection please d the facts i only called her once me closes fire and sits down obligatory not a lawyer but i was defending myself against a debt collector for a debt so old i could not even remember for sure that it was mine me to the debt collector can you provide the actual contract bearing my signature along with a chain of title to the debt debt collector's lawyer crickets i look at the judge judge to lawyer well can you debt collector's lawyer while looking through paperwork um well no not at this time your honor judge case dismissed note to prove that a debt collector owns your debt they must prove how it came to own it often old debts are sold and resold over and over again to a number of subsequent debt buyers when this happens the debt collector must prove each and every assignment by showing a chain of title reaching all the way back in history to the original creditor more often than not for old debts it is impossible for the collector to show this they really need to reform debt so that this chain of title is required before collections can proceed it should be a very simple thing to do and it would prevent abusive practices this isn't my story although i am an attorney it's my dad's he was a federal prosecutor and a few years ago he prosecuted a high-profile white collar fraud case against a defendant that had essentially run a ponzi scheme through a small investment bank in ohio he had purchased the fraud resulted in 200 million stolen from low to middle class victims that had invested their retirement savings the defendant who was also an attorney testified that he never did anything illegal and the investment bank simply failed because of the downturn in 2008 which resulted in failed investments my dad then played for the jury a recording from a wiretap the fbi had obtained of the defendant's cell phone in 2009 the call was a conversation between the defendant and his cfo during the call the defendant instructed the cfo to lie to investors by telling them the bank's computer system was down for a jewish holiday so the investors couldn't withdraw their money the cfo responded can't we go to jail for this the defendant answered yeah but no one is going to find out the defendant was convicted on 12 stroke 12 counts during sentencing my father quoted dante's inferno citing the fact that the bottom level of heck is reserved for grifters and fraudsters who know better but still take advantage of people the defendant was sentenced to multiple life terms i represented a poor woman whose husband left her and their child behind he was of course unemployed he did not want to pay and started his plea with how much he loved his child but couldn't afford anything i started to laugh which was of course a bad move of me the guy his lawyer and the judge stated that it was unprofessional for me to laugh i luckily came back presented his rental bill petrol bill and phone bill together forming two times his welfare check without his daily bar tab so we can only conclude he has a job in black and that he chooses not to pay for his beloved child the judge looked at him he couldn't reply and we finally won with him needing to pay 1.5 times his welfare check to his ex-wife sadly he fled to north africa to escape the sentencing in the state of new york if you are issued a citation for a traffic violation you are allowed to request a supporting deposition which is essentially the officer swearing that he saw you violating whatever law you broke the courts must supply this sd within 30 days of your request or you can't motion to dismiss the case on traffic violations where the sd isn't supplied by the officer at the time of the citation there's a box you can fill in where you can request one i filled mine in with black pen and went down to the courthouse i handed the citation to the clerk and asked for a reschedule of my court date to more than 30 days out because i was going out of town no sd was supplied to me i showed up and motioned to dismiss and the judge was legit proud of me his words were i'd never looked down on someone for successfully navigating the legal system dismissed i once had an appeal where the president all from other circuit courts was very bad for me the circuit court i was arguing in front of had a decision that was very good for me but it was unpublished meaning that it was not presidential my goal was to convince the court to follow its unpublished decision not the decisions of the other circuits during my argument i cited the unpublished decision one of the judges interrupts me and asks it wasn't that decision and published i answered yes but it was well reasoned he replied with a self-effacing quip i was on the panel for that decision so it couldn't have been that well reasoned the audience laughed a bit i answered quickly in that case your honor it was at least well written the audience and all the judges burst into laughter i ended up winning in a published decision which turned the old and published decision into binding precedent a bit of humor can go a long way in the courtroom especially when you're flattering the judges once had fairly standard rtc case my client going round a roundabout in a small car got sideswiped by a lorry driver a claim for damages loss of earnings and the rest other side's entire case rested on whether the lorry driver saw my client or not as we could prove from cctv that my client was well within her lane within speed limits and generally on solid ground legally speaking their client gets into the witness box and is asked if he saw my client while you can't ask leading questions to your own client a napkin could tell he was being prodded towards saying no the man promptly responds i i did but the b shouldn't have been where she was my cross-examination consisted of getting him to repeat that answer and then sitting down to date the easiest day in court i ever had i helped the prosecution rest his case lol i got jammed up during spring break doing dumb spring break crap so there i was in court to face the music misdemeanors as i sat there waiting for my turn i watched person after person go before the judge the prosecutor read their charges and some information from the police report stating what the potential max sentence was for each all i don't remember exactly then the judge asked what plea they wanted to enter almost everyone said not guilty and i could see that both the judge and prosecutor were getting tired of their bulls finally my turn came i was probably second to last after what seemed like hours but may not have been the prosecutor read off my charges and cited the police report the judge looked at me with this let's just get it out of the way tell us you're not guilty look and asked how i pled guilty your honor the judge and the prosecutor both looked at each other and the judge said kid you not say again or beg your pardon guilty your honor i did it just the way officer so-and-so's report reads they exchanged looks again and the prosecutor held his papers at arm's length as if to get a better look at them and did the unthinkable your honor this all reads to me like a case of college prank gone bad the county moves to reduce charges to z's i walked and they're expecting some jail time and walked out paying like 110 dollars plus costs i didn't really know how to feel about the scariest day of my life turning into one of the happiest ones same thing happened to my dad got a traffic ticket for something had to go to court everybody else is doing the water works dad's turn is up judge asked him about the ticket dad just says that yes he did it he didn't mean to but he did judge just told him to get out of there or something like that lol i've had a couple such enjoyable moments though there have all been no further questions moments as i rest my case is not something i get to say in family court i apologize in advance for what is likely to be a pretty lengthy post in the first ever domestic violence restraining order dvro case i had as a new attorney i represented a woman who has broken up with her ex-boyfriend after he has shoved hit her she filed for a dvro when he continued to harass her and show up uninvited to her place the process for getting a dvro at least in my state is the victim files documents describing the alleged abuse and a judge decides to grant a temporary restraining order with a hearing scheduled within a couple weeks where each side can present their case even after my client got the temporary restraining order her ex continued to try to contact her including randomly showing up where always she took her dog for a walk at 5am the morning of the hearing even though this was 25 miles away from where he lived at the hearing even before either party got to testify the judge reiterated that any violation of the temporary restraining order including attempted contact with the victim was grounds for a permanent dvro being issued the judge ended up ordering a brief recess before we were to introduce evidence testimony during the recess my client went to the bathroom and the ex decided it would be a good idea to follow her into the bathroom to talk her out of pursuing the dvro he had not noticed that the bailiff was also using said bathroom and the bailiff immediately ordered him out of the women's bathroom and threatened to arrest him when we got back into the courtroom x took the witness stand to testify i asked him if he had just attempted to enter the women's restroom to make contact with my client when he answered affirmatively i smuggly stated that i had no further questions the judge told him a new one and the dvro was immediately ordered on one other dvro case i handled i was defending a husband who was accused of completely unsubstantiated and clearly fabricated abused by his train wreck of a wife my first question for the wife when she took the witness stand was isn't it true you made these allegations and are requesting this dvro solely for purposes of gaining an advantage in custody and support proceeding i obviously assumed she was going to deny it and was really just planning to try to get her angry on the stand so she'd slip up and giving consistent or conflicting testimony when she answered yes the judge looked as surprised as i was i immediately stated that i had no further questions despite the fact that i had prepared at least 40 50 questions for her and sat down the judge tossed the case moments later two high school kids spend their day pee each other off so they decide to drive to a fast food restaurant to fight they park get out immediately approach and swing kiddy connects the first blow squarely and solidity across kid b and instantly drops him the whole fight was one punch with a total elapsed time of a few seconds the restaurant is sued for failure to protect its patrons the case is weak unfortunately kid b hit the pavement hard and had severe brain damage attempts were made to settle but they were after millions we knew walking and they had two former employees testifying about large crowds building up after school the plaintiff attorney aimed to prove the restaurant had a reasonable expectation of trouble and should have had armed guards in the parking lot at best their witnesses wildly exaggerating to the point of perjury their credibility was shaky and being highly disgruntled for being fired we had a list of witnesses ready to refute their claims at trial the plaintiff attorney presented first he spent a long time building up the bad blood between the kids the serious damages of kid b and his potential learning capacity a lot of foundation work to build sympathy for his client we break for lunch on day two after which it would be the defense presentation as we were talking through where we were and how we should proceed we realized the restaurant was not really mentioned at all plaintiff held back his star witnesses to rebut the defense presentation the restaurant was safe so when we reconvened defense rests your honor the plaintiff attorney fell out of his chair he begins frantically shuffling papers on his table and was stammering the judge says i take it you will need a few minutes for your clothes after that break plaintiff's attorney gave one of the worst closing remarks i've ever heard jury kid be ten percent at fault kid a ninety percent of fault restaurant 0 oh man i think this is my favorite one you just let the other attorney hang himself and his client all on his own that is just fabulous i was in a gang-related jury trial for attempted murder defendant was a known [ __ ] and the victim was a blood against his attorney's advice the defendant testified defendant had a tattoo on his arm that said bk i asked him what became meant and he replied with blood color i was shocked he said what it actually meant but in retrospect i guess i shouldn't have been since he actually decided to testify burger king so i typically do plaintiffs work for corporations but one of my clients was getting sued by a former contractor for work allegedly performed right before he was fired in the amount of 150 k i had never dealt with opposing counsel she was about my age 32 and seemed nice heading up to trial the day of our pre-trial just five days before trial she tells me in the elevator i hope you know i'm going to kick your butt in trial i laughed and she said no really you are screwed trial comes and she drags out her case over five days and i start to get the impression her client made up the invoices with her help she finally rests her case and i called her client as my only witness he immediately testified his attorney showed him how to make the invoices the judge won't allow them into evidence she lost her case and was sanctioned five dollars k for falsifying evidence she appealed in the court of appeals ripped into her needless to say i didn't get my butt kicked i've always heard that if you're going to break the law you shouldn't draw excess attention to yourself when you do a lawyer friend of mine had this scenario his client moved into a newly built office building where they got to do a fair amount of construction work to arrange the offices on their floor how they wanted as it turned out there was this overly large gap between the lip of the elevator door and the floor on the order of an inch or so you wouldn't think that's enough for an issue but it was leading to people continuously tripping themselves up so since they were doing construction anyway they paid someone else to do a small concrete pour to smooth things out and fix the problem the original construction company finds out about this and uses their technically unconcluded contract to insist that they can rip up that floor and fix it themselves they do so and now instead of a small issue next to the elevator the entire surface of the elevator lobby on that floor is ruined random and half inch dips and hills all over the place there was basically no leveling of any kind done upon being told that this was unacceptable the construction company responded by sending the client a bill for the first redo that they hadn't wanted done since they'd solved the problem and a quote for fixing it the timeline of these events was presented to the court and then an extremely scientific presentation on just how truly horrid this flaw was with high-resolution topographic maps of the surface presented clearly showing just how bad this floor was and then the lawyer while talking with the lead engineer for the construction company leans in and asks a question is this acceptable work for your company the reason this is such a mic drop is that it is handing the construction company a win but at great cost if they say yes then the client has to pay the first bill and would have to pay for a redo but then the lead engineer of that construction company goes on public recorder stating that shoddy work is considered acceptable by the company if they say number then the construction company eats the cost of the reader and the reader necessary to fix it and goes on record as saying they screwed up in alberta i was in traffic court one time and saw a lawyer straight up murderer cop with words the cop had previously testified that the weather on the night of the traffic stop was heavy rain and wind so strong that the defendant could only open his window three inches and that the car had stopped on an area with very little shoulder forcing the cop to approach from the passenger side not the driver's side the cop had then testified that he smelled a strong smell of alcohol on the defendant's breath when the defense lawyer got up he repeated what the cop had said almost verbatim and asked how he could have possibly smelled alcohol on the breath of someone on the other side of the car through a three inches crack in the window on a night with pouring rain and strong winds the cop sort of opened and shut his mouth a few times squirmed around in his seat and said that's just what i always write in my log to remind me that it was a dui stop the judge threw the case out no motion to dismiss needed then he took a break and called the traffic prosecutor and the cop into his office i'm guessing it wasn't for a nice spot of tea and some sconce really people you've never seen in all in a comment thread before how about writing dui stop in the book much shorter good god man this isn't and i rest my case moment but it was a dang fun cross examination i was defending an alimony case and in my state cohabitation with a new lover is a bar to alimony we had had a pie on the plaintiff's tale for a few months and she and opposing council had no clue i had a mountain of evidence that the plaintiff had moved in a new boyfriend and they were essentially husband and wife without the marriage certificate so if i could prove cohabitation she didn't get alimony on cross-examination i'd set her up with a question i knew she'd lie about and then hit her with a photo contradicting her so it's your testimony that john doe never visited your house oh so do you have an explanation for why he's walking in your front door in this photo so he did come over but never stayed overnight i see do you have an explanation for why his car was parked outside of your overnight on x x x x and x knights are seen in these photographs for a solid 45 minutes to an hour i'd ask a question she'd lie and then i'd impeach her with a photo directly contradicting her i was catching her in a like a minute or more she never wised up either after the first few times you'd think she'd tell the truth knowing that i'd just catch her in another lie but nope she just kept on lying again it wasn't the flashiest or even an i rest my case type moment but it's the most fun i've ever had on cross in the subsequent order the court made the specific finding that the plaintiff's testimony was without denyotov credibility serious family court layers what's the most petty behavior you've seen from parents when i was in law school i worked on a case involving the parents of the victim of sandy hook they were divorced prior to losing their child but were still fighting over child support several years later they were fighting over who got to keep the victims compensation fund proceeds for the death of their six-year-old they were insanely rich so it wasn't about the money it was about getting a win over their former spouse it wasn't so much petty that they were fighting over it but the way they were fighting over it using the death of their baby to score points against that baby's other parent and the other children were stuck in the middle of this crap show incredibly petty but much more depressing than anything else worst case i've ever worked on i'm just an intern but i once was sifting through discovery that our client provided as he was trying to win custody over his son one of these pieces of discovery was a detailed account of the mother's timeliness basically if the mother was late to pick up her son they would time it and document it which would make sense if it was significant but i'm not exaggerating over a six-month period she was late for a total of 33 minutes seeing as they met to exchange the child three times a week it means she was late by about one or two minutes once a week it was the most insignificant piece of data that i have ever seen in my entire life but the client was adamant that we use it in court to prove that the mother was irresponsible family law legal assistant here a client of ours included a chunk of pork in the freezer in her list of assets that she insisted she get back the lawyer on the other side came back with respectfully i'm not going to argue over second-hand meat in a freezer my gf is a family lawyer she had a pair from eastern europe where in ontario who wanted a divorce long fight over what the husband's assets were he claimed to be living on less than twelve thousand dollars cashier wife hired a private detective eventually found that he was hiding another home won a big settlement my gf is really happy note she doesn't get a penny of the settlement or bonus or extra pay she just liked seeing the liar court but the wife still isn't happy claims the husband is hiding even more money keeps badgering him with more legal stuff even though my gf is telling her you won let it be then husband hires a pie finds out the wife is joint owner of another house with her new boyfriend settlement and validated my gf immediately got off the record and refused to help the woman anymore worked in an attorney's office for a little bit knew about a divorce case one of the attorneys was involved in where the child had been diagnosed with a terminal disease with maybe a few years left and the parents tried to fight over what the child's wish should be for one of those maker wish type of foundations i do know the judge chewed both parents a new one when this issue came up but ultimately could not make a call on how the wish would be granted i believe the child ending up refusing the wish on account of the argument it caused between the parents just hearing about the details of this case fricked me up for a while not really petty but more psychotic my dad received full custody and won everything in the divorce because my mom was diagnosed with a multitude of mental problems that she refused to take medication for and she was an abusive alcoholic who also did m for fancies anyways after all that was said and done she decided she'd show us when we were gone she'd break into the house and steal random crap like tupperware lids all of the tupperware lids i crap you not we came home from school and all of the forks were gone so we went to walmart and bought forks came home with forks and all of the spoons were gone we found out she'd been getting in through my bedroom window so we put a lock on the window and put up security cameras didn't work out because three days later while we were gone we got her on video stealing yes actually stealing the window and running down the road before you ask yes we have a restraining order yes we turned the tapes over to the cops no you can't have a crazy person put into a mental hospital against them unless they are a physical threat to themselves or others yes she still randomly steals stuff from my dad's house it's more of an amusement now though you always decorate the tops of your cabinets with stuff and forget about it so we play this game called what used to be there three thousand dollars between me and another very good lawyer to argue about thirteen dollars a month versus thirty 30 month child support they had 50 stroke 50 custody the kid was 13. even after i did the math for my client explaining they were paying me more than the difference for the entire rest of child support they still wanted to do it when i was a kid and my parents were divorcing my dad filed many lawsuits against my mother for anything and everything when i was 10 years old he even told me he was going to take me to court in a lawsuit because i didn't want to go visit him client once called me with an emergency the emergency was that his soon-to-be ex-wife fed the kid chef boyardee for dinner i went to law school for this the interim court order said that my client the mum was not to discuss the court proceedings with the child during an access visit the child asked her when will i get to see you again and my client responded we'll have to see but hopefully soon the father then argued that this was discussing the court proceedings with the child and tried using it as an excuse to deny any further access as an intern i saw a couple have long hateful emails about who was going to keep a unisex armani hoodie almost all of their discussion centered on that one hoodie when in the end the husband got to keep it the wife cut holes into it which ruined it it was pretty nice tbh what i get from this is that if you ever divorce someone really petty put a lot of focus on a few random items you don't actually care about a mother actively coaching her two kids to say that dad was physically and s sorely abusive to them she would have gotten away with it except for two things one the court appointed psych managed to catch these lies out in the interview to date longest report i have read that 280 pages and two the eldest kid then 10 i think got annoyed at the mother for some such reason and recorded her on their cell phone which was promptly played for dad in the end dad got full day to day care and mother had supervised contact for six months before she went to every second weekend this happened in january guy was straight out of jail two years and of course at that point his marriage was rocky as heck when his wife dropped his kids off to visit he lived with his parents for parole purposes the son said his uncle hit him the father then filed a pfa against the wife and uncle it was granted then he files for sole custody it was granted the kids were in his custody for about two months before the custody hearing of course my boss threw me the file and i had to handle the mediation and last minute prep at mediation the father and wife sit angry-eyed literally each cross-armed and furious the other lawyer and i discuss the facts and what arrangement each client wants briefly in another room we come out and our clients are gone magically and praise the lord in the course of ten minutes of me and the lawyer talking the father and mother made up made out in the corner of the hallway and returned the case was dropped may i mention this was pro bono pa jurisdiction 2. repeatedly taking the kids to cps and trying to get them to accuse a teenager of our pay every medical record makes it clear that the mother was the only one doing any talking what's worse she was a social worker trained to interview child sex victims professionally so men and i don't know which to choose a father once called me because his ex-wife was planning to take their daughter to disney world he said he was concerned she might decide to stay there and he wouldn't know how to contact his daughter right it's not because your kid might have fun with mom it's because of the epidemic of people who just don't come back from disney sounds legit a mother who had for good cause lost custody of her children for the foreseeable future wouldn't let them retrieve their clothes and stuff from her house because she claimed she would never get it back a dad who made 90 of the parents combined income tried to get the quarter force mom to pay her 10 share of their teenage son's car insurance costs because reasons i did the math her share came out to less than 25 per day this after she had to go to court to get him to pay his share of the kids educational expenses i've lost track of how many times i've seen a pair and tell the judge they'd rather pay the cost of a babysitter than let the child spend more time with the other parent who was willing able and eager to watch the kid of course they always want the other parent to pay their share of the babysitter cost two of course another popular one divorce seems to be the leading cause of very successful businesses suddenly and mysteriously tanking business is great what's that my ex might be entitled to a portion of my business oh this business ain't doing so good no more the economy you know tough times the worst i was ever a part of in california we have certain requirements to meet before one parent can move away with the child this requirements kick in when the other parents visitation will be materially impacted by the move my client is mom she is a dental hygienist she has kids with dentist one and divorces dad for dentist too she wants to move with the kids to dentist whose town so she can work for him live closer to work etc dentist 2s town is a 25 minute drive away from dentist 1s town 25 minutes between the two of them the two dentists must have spent nearly 400k fighting over a 25-minute move this was also the moment i realized i made a terrible mistake becoming a lawyer when i should have become a dentist my first job out of law school was as a trial court staff attorney this is basically a judicial law clerk so we did a lot of research and advisory memos for judges i didn't cover a family law docket but my office mate did she got an emergency motion in a family law case one time for the non-lawyers these are filed when something is extremely time sensitive and critically like a matter of life and death important if the judge deems it a true emergency your matter will be heard on an expedited basis they'll fast track you in for a hearing usually in a matter of days rather than the usual weeks months it normally takes to get a hearing date anyhow this particular emergency motion was to compel the ex-spouse to send their child to happy faces daycare because if the child couldn't go to happy faces daycare it was going to be irreparably damaged from the lack of social exposure etc emergency happy faces daycare fml needless to say this was not an emergency i don't know how the motion was ultimately ruled on other than that it wasn't an emergency probably the case where a woman s sooly assaulted her toddler daughter digital penetration in the bathroom of a supervised visitation center i guess her plan was that the child would see dad and start complaining about the pain not very smart though as i said it was all supervised yes she lost custody that or fighting over a fuzzy blue couch that's less petty and more psychopathic canadian family lawyer here many instances of pettiness generally good family lawyers will call their client on their bs we don't want to be the lawyer standing in front of a judge over really petty things reputation is important client my son is very mature for his age i believe access to his mother should be per his discretion me your two-year-old son that said i've had people call my office yelling that my client wouldn't allow them to pick up the infant child at 10 pm only four hours late for a visit one guy fired two previous lawyers and retained me to negotiate adding three meaningless words to a settlement we're talking months of intense negotiations between council one parent refused to allow another parent to take kids on vacation because they wanted to take the child to disney first despite you know not having the funds to do so the most petty other parents who phoned cps child protection services or the police for every minor disagreement your two-year-old cries when leaving your home call child protection services one guy was a total control freak he'd gone to the philippines and romanced his now ex-wife brought her back to australia and then expected her to be a slave for him pop out his kids etc etc when she left him he manipulated her into believing that they would share care of the kids and they didn't need court orders then behind her back he went to court obtained soul custody of the kids and basically cut her out then when she was back on her feet and could finally go back to court and try to get her kids back he said she was a prostitute among other things he said the kids were learning inappropriate behavior from her despite the fact that he was living in a trailer caravan modified shipping container something like that with no actual walls between the kid's room and the bedroom he shared with his new partner and the mother was living in a house with bedrooms and doors real nice guy in the end he didn't use a lawyer so he was completely steamrolled in court his court documents were laughable literally everything that had ever gone wrong with the kids was the mother's fault and he now sees the kids once a fortnight instead of having them live with him full-time so there's a way not to do things also hilariously one of the things he said in court was that he knew when he was impregnating the mother because he can't control his ejaculation riaeite as an intern in law school i saw a case where the father was likely going to get an unfavorable custody and support arrangement so he claimed the mother was unfit his basis she's into kinky stuff and has a new boyfriend he insisted on telling the court specifically what he likes in bed even though he admitted that the children never saw or were subjected to any of these acts he did it just to embarrass the mother i've seen some crazy pettiness but the best story i have is actually from my guardian ad litem professor when she was practicing she had a client whose ex-wife was super duper anal about getting all of the children's clothes back from his house when she got the kids back from him like if one sock was left behind all heck would break loose so this guy's solution was to make the children strip naked in the foyer and put on clothes specifically worn at his place when it was his turn to have them then when they went back to moms they had to strip naked again and change back into the clothes she sent them there in in law school i did some intern work for a family law clinic most of my clients were pretty reasonable but when waiting for my cases to be heard in the hearing room i saw some really petty and terrible crap from other parties but one case stood out as the worst one guy who got custody of the family dog in the divorce said that if he didn't get more visitation with the children he would have the dog euthanized his excuse was that without the kids there the dog wouldn't get the attention it needed and was better off dead the ex-wife made an impassioned plea before the judge showing pictures of the kids playing with the dog and video testimony from the kids expressing their love for it it was 100 clear they would be devastated if the dog was put down while the judge was very sympathetic and tried asking the ex-husband to be reasonable in the end her hands were tied since the dog was the ex-husband's property per the divorce agreement and he was free to do whatever he wanted provided it comported with state anti-cruelty laws in the end she relented to give him custody rights basically every weekend of the month in order to save the kid's dog to the judge's credit she gave the ex-husband a verbal haranguing like i've never seen in all my years of practicing law since she warned him that she would be watching this case very closely and would not hesitate referring it to a criminal prosecutor if he slips up in any way either towards the treatment of the dog or the kids and that if anything happens to that dog she would fast track a hearing to revisit his visitation rights and strongly implied the new visitation schedule would be vastly against his favor should that come to pass on that day i realized i never wanted to be a family lawyer father wanted full custody of his child child was in full mother's custody child has diabetes both parents must fill a daily glucose intake measured by glucometer every time father dropped the child and moms he would buy our snickers or twix on the way there and feed it to the kid then we flipped out the glucose measurings during court due to the measurings being extremely high when the child was at moms we were able to get the child to the father's full custody i didn't know what he was doing i certainly didn't advise him to do it he just bring it to the courthouse and ordered me to present it either that or that time where during divorce a guy had exact knowledge of how many toilet paper sheets his wife was overusing and how many litres of warm water she overused for my first job as an attorney i clerked for a state court of appeals an appellate court reviews all manner of lower court decisions including family law every single case that was sent to our court came with a case file that included all the actions that the trial court took in the course of a trial a transcript of all court proceedings and briefs by all concerned parties and most often you could immediately know what kind of case you were handling simply by the size thickness of that case file usually criminal cases had the thinnest files two three inches thick a day or two of trial transcript short briefs by the defendant in the state and approximately 10 15 motions civil cases were a little thicker because the frequent use of expert testimony made the trial and transcripts longer and the lack of a constitutional right to speedy trial in civil cases allowed many attorneys to use procedural law and motions in a coercive manner so there was a lot of paperwork read rainmaker usually the party's briefs included a few more issues than you'd find in a criminal case altogether five six inches thick this was a death penalty state and we did have many such cases these were serious felonies and trials took a couple of weeks so very thick transcripts many required constitutional steps and required a separate trial for sentencing these case files were maybe 12 15 inches thick then there were the divorce cases appeals are not mandated in divorce cases so my court only saw those divorce cases where the fighting between the ex-spouses couldn't be resolved satisfactorily by the divorce court in other words at least one ex wanted another opinion chance at winning these case files took up drawers these case files were measured in feet not inches the largest files were those where children were involved in other words these people wouldn't co-parent and so had to run back to the trial court for nearly every single disagreement where and how to school feed clothe practice religion conduct extracurricular activities etc repeatedly renegotiating child support repeatedly trying to change custody or visitation orders trying to control how the other parent managed his or her time with the child and every single one of these court proceedings cost money lots of money i handled one case where the father didn't want the mother to give the child multivitamins hundreds of dollars in attorney fees over a flintstone chewable these fights were really rarely about the kids they were attempts to control the ex-spouse through the kids and what these litigants never realized is that by refusing to co-parent they essentially were giving over their parental role to the judge in their efforts to control one another they lost all power and control i'm not a lawyer i just worked for one one case involved a family three kids aged 210 the father was being accused rather suddenly of abusing his children the mother brought suit against him for this i got to read a psychologist evaluation of the whole thing it was long and i only half remember it so i'll try to keep it short the father was surprised to say the least and the mother was rather hostile the children did mention stories of abuse and indicated to cps that they were being abused in one-on-one sessions the mother was described as having many detailed stories of the abuse the how the why the when the maternal grandmother was also apparently helping her with these some of her descriptions were painful going as far as to detail how the father abused his naked two-year-old daughter while changing her diaper the mother apparently also had a history of abuse as a child and was working night shifts that stressed her out a lot recently but didn't want to change this the father's evaluation was shorter he appeared like a deer in headlights and didn't understand his wife's sudden shift in tone he only came to terms with the full consequences much later in the proceedings the children themselves were evaluated during visits with their respective parents noting that the mother was extremely controlling in the presence of the supervisor and would reprimand in ways that were ineffective the father's time with the children was much warmer more natural he was able to redirect the children to behave without any punishment or reprimands with one-on-one time with the children they indicated signs of abuse though it's interesting how they have to do things with very young children the psychologist did not get the impression that these indications were genuine and that they were coached at the psychologist's conclusion gave the impression that the mother and maternal grandmother were coaching the children into indicating their father was abusive the conclusion was mostly that the children should immediately be placed in custody with their father the mother would get visitation rights but not custody the cps report indicating abuse was a false positive due to the use of leading questions and other techniques which were not accurate this report more or less cemented the father's position as sole caretaker as it became clear the mother had concocted his story i don't remember the exact motives or reasons just that it was generally unpleasant and taught me a lot about how far parents would go worked in a law firm dealing in family matters couple hammers out a separation agreement over months of meetings mediation letters and drafts back and forth ended up having to take it to court because they couldn't agree on who would get the air miles the freaking air miles i am an assistant to a family attorney and jesus christ people are petty buttholes both men and women equally by the way i would say the most frequent is not allowing the other parent to take the kids to disneyland or to visit their grandparents out of state literally going to court to prevent them from doing that it happens so much they don't care about whether or not the child has fun they just want to sabotage the other parent for moving on some people just can't let go of their exes even if they are the ones that left kids are just tools for revenge the revenge they want is for their offspring to resent the other parent as much as they do i realize that family law is such a huge industry because there are so many petty buttholes and all-out psychos that exist the funny thing is that if these people are your friends and co-workers you would just never know how they are with their families not everyone is as chill as they seem client's spouse of decades gets a terminal cancer diagnosis about halfway into a fairly routine medium-high asset divorce my client is such a viciously horrible person saying they were glad that the spouse was dying that the opposing party's literal dying wish is to be divorced and never see a spouse of 30 plus years again lawyers who read wills to families what is the most interesting bizarre offensive surprising thing you have had to read out loud one of my former bosses was getting up in age and had no children one day we were discussing family history and he mentioned how he still had the old family bible his grandparents brought over from germany with the whole family tree hand written into it which i thought was an amazing thing to have but he went on to lament that when he died he was going to have to go to his ungrateful good for nothingness since the old rules of inherit and said she should get it even though he knew she didn't care a thing about the family history several of us involved in the discussion tried to convince him that there had to be some other family member that would give it the respect it deserved or barring that a historical society that would know what to do with it but he would have none of it since that just isn't the way it is done years later i thought of this while attending his funeral and tried to figure out who was that niece maybe in hopes of broaching the subjects with her but never could i still wonder about it sometimes and hope for his sake that it ended up in good hands lawyer here not a thing with reading the will just my favorite testator dying guy wanted to leave bequests to pretty much everybody he had known who was still living in three countries one percent to this guy two percent to that lady and then he kept changing his mind about one beneficiary or the other which required the development of a spreadsheet to recalculate all the other bequests whenever he will change that guy's gift from one percent to 1.5 percent unfortunately for sanity it was a pot of cash if he had changed physical bequests half my spoons to my cousin lydia the other half no 5 8 we would have had to kill him there is one famous device in a wolf from new york a rich man left everything to his wife provided she remarried the will supposedly had the explanation that the testator put this condition on the will because he wanted to make sure at least one person truly mourned his death i bequeath all my property to my wife on the condition that she remarry immediately then there will be at least one man to regret my death heinrich heiner 1797-1856 german poet journalist and literary critic said on his deathbed not in his will i think title examiner here i once read all where the dissident left his presumably gay son the 12 feet of rope in my tool shed so the f can do us all a favor and hang himself his words not mine there are some truly terrible people in this world what a horrific man an ancestor of mine in the rural uk in the 1700s died and left his farm and everything to his nephew no children with his surviving wife only getting the second best bed and to provision her to receive three pounds of butter per week for the rest of her life we thought this was incredibly mean but we wonder whether this butter was meant as an income i mean who can eat three pounds of butter on behalf of my dad here he one time had a woman leave millions of dollars to three stray cats that she had been feeding and he had to go catch them and put them in crates to be shipped to texas where they live a life of luxury in a cat resort another guy had a safety deposit box that was massive like the size of a small dresser inside it was filled with coins that they had to count turns out it was several hundred thousand dollars worth of coins me and my wife went to a lawyer to have our wills drafted the lawyer told us of a client he had that had a great deal of money his kids were fighting over it before he was dead the man liked the monkey exhibit in the local zoo he liked to just watch them all the time when he died the lawyer had to tell his family he willed all of his money and estate to the zoo for the monkey exhibits he now has a bench dedicated to his honor at one of the local zoos he said they were livid and tried to fight lesson is don't be petty and greedy love your family unconditionally you know how a bench dead over is to his honor can you please take another shot at this sentence i'm actually really interested in this story and would like to know what he how noah bench dead of over is in his honor years ago worked in a retirement community older man we knew as gay developed a late in life relationship and moved into the community with his gay lover he was a career vet multiple honors a wall of medals he was also a bit of in butthole most days but he had moments over a meal his stories were fantastic his children over three years never once visited him he had a heart attack and knew he was going to die his children showed up but demanded his lover leave for visits in his will he left everything to his lover and his love as one child from a former marriage he wrote a long note about his kid's hypocrisy of not visiting and their attitudes toward his lover he left each of his two kids a pail of coal ash to be deducted from his estate had his estate pay for his lover's plot to be next to him and his wife and in his long letter that his kids if they visited him in his death would be reminded of why they didn't visit why he was alive it was frankly awesome hearing his kids blow up about it my sister spent a couple years working for a long-standing organization in philly that's been accepting bequeathement since the late 18th century her job was to help organize the various trusts they had to administer as well as going around advising people not to do things like this and just leave them a lump sum people had a habit of leaving them an annual trust that five dollars a year was a princely sum in 1813 but by now it's just a complete nuisance or of leaving them ridiculously specific things to do every year the worst example i remember i'm a little fuzzy on the details was a woman who left funds to purchase books for school children in liberia the problem is her funds now don't buy more than a couple books and she left instructions for someone to deliver the books not to ship them a delivery driver is someone colon three when my grandparents on my mother's side were dying of cancer my uncle black sheep piece of crap of the family who i've never met thank god wanted to know what he was getting from the inheritance when they died not house mom and dad or what can i do to help my grandparents being the people they were was still going to give him an inheritance after all the freaked up things he did to them but my mum the power of attorney convinced them that they shouldn't be manipulated by him anymore they ended up writing him an email back telling him that he wouldn't be included in the will anymore he ended up threatening to burn their house down my house down killing me and my family etc for betraying him and you know what my grandparents did they ended up including him in the will and sending him exactly one penny in check form by mail that was the last time i have heard from him since i work for a brokerage firm and i often deal with account beneficiaries we had a client leave his entire account to a stripper after the client died his wife discovered her husband had left his life savings to gene sparkles smith she was p really p lawyer here we normally don't actually do a reading of the will here like they do in the movies it's much more boring we just fire up the probate and send notice to all the airs the weirdest one i saw was a guy that was worth about two million dollars who left my car jacket and one dollar to my son i hope it keeps him warm when he winds up sleeping under a bridge the kid had a drug issue i also had someone leave an antique commode to one of his kids yes he considered an elderly toilet to be a family heirloom the guy was actually pretty excited to get the toilet it was the last thing they had left to remember their grandma bye i crap you not pun intended a friend had two sisters when their father passed away their mom had died in their childhood anyway years go by and the oldest daughter is the only one who keeps in contact with the father for various reasons dude was an abusive dong played favorites all of that crap older sister was obviously the favorite as she got everything the other daughter and son my friend got one dollar apiece oldest sister could have been a dong about it but decided to be pro status they all sat down to dinner on a night and big sister was like listen dad left me all of this it was a pretty sizable amount of money she could have taken it and lived comfortably without working till the day she died maybe definitely if she managed the money proper she sat down with her little brother and sister and was like three ways even deal end of it you all would think that you would do the same for your brother sister best friend whatever you'd be surprised what people are really like when money is involved even a small amount of it fricked up not in this case though i am not a lawyer but i am deputy public administrator and we find wills often we deal with individuals who died without any known family or the family is estranged and we have to locate them one of the wills i read said no freaking lawyers in the text and another one stated i would like crack powder stuffed in my ears and cremated i'm a trust attorney i can't tell you how many times the surviving spouse from a blended marriage cuts out the step kids they always try to justify it to me even though i really don't care i'm not there to judge los angeles residents are especially concerned about their pets i've written trust where the pets inherit more than the kids it's always awkward when i have to tell a child they were disinherited no easy way to tell a person that i'm not a lawyer but my family has an odd story involving a will several generations back a woman along with her brothers and our family inherited a huge sum of money from her father oil money in oklahoma at the time women were allowed to inherit property assets if single but all assets would have been transferred to her husband if she married she wasn't too happy about the situation and in protest never took her husband she had a few friends over the course of her life and lived a very comfortable life until dying of old age at which time her estate was divided amongst all of the female descendants in the family tl dnr my great great great aunt of something was a bad but feminist bee my office has had two notably bizarre estates the first the mother stipulated in her will that one of her sons was not to receive his portion of her estate until he went to her dentist but the second stipulated that her two cats were to be utilized upon her death and cremated with her i just remembered another though it was in preparation of an older lady's will she wanted it in there for her to be buried next to her late husband on the family property he had died a few years before her had to question whether his body or ashes are buried on the property neither of which are particularly legal never got a firm answer from her growing up my brother and i played rock paper scissors over every little thing my dad wanted the will to have if both him and mom died together to have me and my brother play one hand of rock paper scissors for everything my father is an heir to the proctor and gamble company just so we are clear i am not rich anyway my grandfather was adopted with his brother by two spinster sisters part of the png family had an elevator in his house the whole nine yards my grandfather went to the war was part of the battle of the bulge and came back completely shell-shocked he began drinking and partying etc when the sisters died everything was left to his brother assuming my grandfather would drink away the money my grandfather was left a small general store to support his family a small home and a car he cleaned up his act and sort counseling when they figured out ptsd and his brother gave him nothing and never spoke to him after he was better the brother once purposely crossed the street so he would not have to speak to my father his nephew not a lawyer but happened with my family my grandfather-in-law's daughter tried to change his will without him knowing about it after he passed they were all gathered at the reading the only thing he left her was a really nice bronze sculpture of the devil or pan playing the flute i worked with trusts and estates for many years one of my favorites was from a widower whose wife had died some 20 years earlier after her death he wanted to travel the country in a motor home but was too grieved to do so years later his old army buddy's wife died and they re-established their friendship in their retirement years he finally bought the motor home he'd dreamed of and left with his buddy to travel the continent which they did for many years after he passed away he left a new motor home to his body but with one stipulation the buddy was required to mount a set of six foot long horns on the hood of the rig before it would become his it sounded like a texan versus non-texan dispute they'd had for many years absolutely brilliant and seemed like an amazing friendship i would have loved to hear their travelling adventures over the years i just remembered he'd also left his sister just two cents and to tell her that he would finally get his two cents in my uncle left his business to his sister and never updated the wool after he got married and had kids they had an old water cooler he had taken from his office back to his home when it was replaced his sister came to the wake to pick it up as he was still technically belonging to the business what a total c the issue here was that a will needs to be a regularly updated document the story was about the estranged sister and a lack of legal framework protecting the family in the case of an antiquated will in the country on question well my father's an attorney not an estate attorney but anyway in my boyfriend's living will he has instructions that his ashes be shot out of a cannon not living will that's a different thing premium marriage material a friend of mine is a lawyer he had one client who in accordance with his will which contained the permits to do so had his entire estate burned while his family watched it sounds cold but apparently the guy died from a fairly easily treatable cancer as he ran out of money and his relatives would not help i work in an enormous courthouse where people often ask any guy in a suit are you a lawyer i was on the probate floor and a very attractive lady in her late 40s asked me that question she proceeded to tell me that she was there because her dead boyfriend had forgotten her in his will despite his many promises his wife and kids had believe it or not gotten all his money again despite his numerous promises what can i do she asked me i was so annoyed that this was not a real case i replied lady this guy is in heck laughing at you right now i wish i had been more sensitive to get the real whole story before i was a lawyer i had a part-time gig sifting through probate records for unclaimed assets but no specific file sticks out but i think one in 50 or so records had really explicit notes regarding why so and so was left out of the will this is done to make it more difficult to contest not a lawyer people i know the husband father was a real difficult controlling badass rich self-made farmer and assumed he will definitely die before his wife he thus worded the will in terms of the first to die in the longest living etc translating from afrikaans here so i hope the terminology is the same he set up the wall so that two of his farms go to his sons and everything else gets sold and go to a trust fund his wife the longest living would have to go to a pre-specified retirement village and get a specified monthly stipend to live from he did not want her to be able to be frivolous with her money anyways his wife had a sudden stroke and passed away long before him the farms went to his sons who refuse point blank to continue taking his controlling crap and he had to go and live in the retirement village with a small monthly stipend d we all laughed our asses off for years afterwards my grandmother was adopted and an only child she took care of her parents until they died a week before my great-grandfather died the pastor from their church locked himself in the bedroom with him and had his will changed when the will was read it stated that my grandmother was not a person of any relation and nothing from the estate was to go to her also the pastor had her adoption records destroyed so that there would be no proof of the relationship because of this she never was able to find out anything about her birth family all of his estate went to the church grandma was a little raw about this sounds like that pastor was playing a little fast and loose with his place in the afterlife at the college i went to there was a wealthy eccentric alum who willed a great deal of money to the school on the condition that it only be used for research into anti-gravity technology he had lost a number of relatives to gravity-related deaths drowning plane crash etc and went a little bit off the deep end the school talked to his family and eventually used the money for a new science building part of the building included a bridge with another building in keeping with the anti-gravity theme law student and paralegal a client had previously executed a will that bequeathed a significant percentage of her estate to her husband's children her husband passed away and we revised her will to remove all reference to her husband's children i guess she was only trying to appease him whilst he was alive additionally all of her jewelry that was going to go to her husband's daughter ended up going to her housemaid my mother's fathers will apparently made the lawyer a bit uncomfortable to read out they were a farming family with three daughters he thought my grandmother was a nice piece of butt and was paranoid about all the suitors upon his demise he left the farm to his wife but their house to the daughters with the stipulation that the wife be allowed to live there unless she remarried she sold the farm and used that to buy the house off my mother and her sisters she didn't remarry but she wasn't going to let anyone control her either my old man does an awful lot of probate law i do a bit of it the thing about it is most people just leave to family they might fall out and that's never fun but there's always a rather grim logic to it the real fun though is always when a person dies intestate that's when the illegitimate children crop up about the only thing to say is that some people really are just see probate teaches you that much intestate not having made a will before one dies my mom's father left her and her three sisters one dollar out of spite one dollar just don't leave anything you freaking dong my grandfather was very well off from being a successful insurance salesman he left his wife and four daughters to start a new life with another woman and her daughters way before i was born leaving a token amount to the person is some sort of legal finji to the effect that the disinherited or cheated person can't say they were forgotten or overlooked they weren't overlooked they got a dollar so it would be harder to contest my father is executor of a wolf for a childless couple that died one after the other the will left the house to two cats the house cannot be sold until the cats die one was a kitten at the time we had this old aunt who was despicable she was full of evil and when i was young and pretty much behaved perfectly she once locked me in her bathroom for absolutely no freaking reason at all my family would search for me and she would pretend she didn't know where i am and it is one of the most horrific experiences of my life my mother hated her and once fed her cat food telling her it was foie gras or some crab anyways she had a change of heart later on and she was pretty okay gave me her gigantic matchbox collection and she would always give me lots of money let's say 20 euros when i was like eight or nine which i think is a lot for a nine-year-old that really only needs money to buy bubble gums so having put that into context she said and her will ex can have this why can have this this goes to zed as for the rest kill yourselves to take them it never dawned on me how freaking weird she was until now my parents will sets aside zero dollars and eight cents per year for the care and feeding of a weird pineapple-shaped cactus that they named sideshow bob i work in the legal industry i am familiar with the matter where the deceased children father were only entitled to their share of distribution if they attended his funeral and converted to the catholic church if not their share would be distributed to his other children of a second marriage the first children made a claim that it was ambiguous as they attended the funeral but did not convert question of if it was inclusive and that it's against public policy to make a person change their religion for a gift and the concept that you cannot rule from the grave the court upheld the father had the right to create that clause in his will and children received nothing controversial would post link to articles but don't know how my dad's friend passed away and before he died he opened up a bar tab with five thousand dollars prepaid at the horse track where they all originally met for his ten or so buddies i thought that was pretty cool to this day they still put drinks on his tab not me but a family friend had to call the cops one day after a will reading the old guy left the majority of his fortune to a granddaughter no one knew existed except the oldest son who had abandoned his starter family and never looked back that crap came back to haunt him nicely this did not stop my sister and i from having an ongoing relationship but upon my parents death we met at our parents house and i was discussing the family safe my sister told me clearly that she had not been in the safer she was unable to open it unbeknownst to her the caretaker was standing right behind her and stated yes you did l you had the safe open this morning before bee got here she didn't say anything i also never told my sister that one of the last serious talks my mom had with me was to make sure my sister did not cheat me out of what was meant for me upon their death i'll never know what was in the safe nor what other items she may have taken after all she may have taken nothing but my sister is my sister and i've always known what she is like as evidently did my mom i don't even think my grandmother had a proper well-documented at the time of her death but it was understood that my aunt who is the elder sister would receive the house that she lived in with her mother on her death plus half of the block of land value that was inherited from my great-grandmother if she paid the upkeep costs highly cut in the grass and paid funeral arrangements my mother who was the younger of the two would only receive half of the great grandmother's property my mother was totally okay with that as she had her own house and so about 10 years later they decide to sell the shared property and split the money my aunt then took my mother to court for the whole amount of the shared property they were only in court for a short time but my mom won plus court cost however she managed that and hasn't spoken to her greedy sister since i used to work in the uk probate registry we had one will where the testator left half a lemon to his accountant with the instructions now squeeze this lawyers offredit what's the worst way you've seen a person screw over someone else in court whether it be criminal civil or divorce proceedings not a lawyer but happened to me and some buddies in college so a group of friends and i rented a five-bedroom house in college and being the group of guys we were partied pretty hard and were really rough on the house we knew going in we were not getting our deposit back well partway though living there the septic started to have some problems whenever someone used the downstairs shower it would rain slowly i.e slowly fill as you used it also one of the rooms carpet would get wet so we emailed the property service company to fix it two weeks later they send out a plumber to snake the line and leave well that didn't fix it so we emailed again two three weeks plumber snake leave still not fixed email and two three weeks and they scope the line turns out roots had grown into the line so they had to do a big old process to completely remove all the roots now it's fixed well we all move out go or separate ways one of my buddies goes to australia for nine months when he gets back he comes home to a bunch of voicemails turns out the property company is coming after us for like five thousand on top of the deposit they tried to pressure him into either paying the money or he would be taken to court he told them he would see them in court for the couple months leading up to the court date he would get calls telling him to pay and it would all go away all day before the first day of court they call him and tell him to pay 2k and give them info for one of the other people on the original lease he says go to heck and see you in court first day of court is just to make sure everyone shows and to schedule the actual case lawyer for the property company shows up is scrambling to figure out what is going on had no records beyond the original lease which changed a couple times as people moved in and out my buddy helps him out by giving him copies of the multiple emails that we sent to get them to fix the septic and the damage it did to the house told my buddy he would let us know how they wanted to proceed never heard from the company again someone i knew had a pro dio case where she had to defend a person who had been charged with a criminal offense don't know what confidential and whatnot even though the police and the could pretty much pinpoint the crime to her client there was no evidence to tie him to the crime circumstantial at best she had instructed him to shut up and let her do the talking during the trial as from experience the client sometimes does not know how to answer a question properly she pleads and can show that the court has nothing on her client she feels that for once a proteo case is going her way after her plea the judge thanks her for her plea and turns to her client he asks if the client had something to add to the plea client looks at her back at the judge tears well up in his eyes and he blurts out i'm so sorry i'll never do it again she threw her notes and everything else she had in her hands at the client now convict apparently she basically got screwed by her own client who screwed himself even worse pro dio is the old term in our jurisdiction same connotation as pro bono this ain't my first prodio well not my story but a prior boss's story they had a drunk driver kills a car worth of people case at the time when they were a general practitioner my boss was representing the family that got hit one where the two kids and the wife had died but the father had not and wanted the college guys drunk driving skin to be mounted on a wall this was back before facebook was commonly used in court proceedings and before tons of people realized that crap is too great for any attorney worth their weight and soul to pass up so the kid drunk driving college kid had managed to get the judge's sympathy during the first part of the hearing by saying he was sorry haunted never going to drink again this was going to ruin his life etc the judge seemed to really be eating it up then comes my boss and immediately burns this kid's remorse to the ground by showing numerous facebook statuses and photos of them binge drinking partying and even joking about driving drunk from the data of the accident up until a night ago the kid looked like he was being forced to swallow hot coals and the judge was absolutely livid needless to say the kid had to do way more than just apologize and be remorseful after that here's kind of an anti-story for balance my marriage with my ex-wife fell apart a while back and she probably cheated on me and i probably drank too much to be a good husband and we argued and separated it could have gotten messy at this point if either of us decided to be vindictive but at this point we knew it was over and our main priority was the kids custody was never an issue because the older kids could choose where they wanted to stay at any given time they chose to stay with me most of the time and although we arranged a timetable for the younger kids they could come and go as they pleased if they were staying with friends in the neighborhood etc child support was also not an issue as i'm not a dong and i'm happy to pay my share towards giving them a decent life i don't count what it costs when they're with me and i pay half towards school costs clothes outings etc on the morning of the divorce proceedings we met for coffee before going before the judge the judge proceeded to ask us what contracts we had signed for the mortgage custody child support etc and we just said none we had it worked out the judge was incredulous and asked several times are you sure this is highly irregular we still have occasional arguments on the details that we have to work out as adults but yeah tomorrow i might get in from work to find one of the younger kids in front of the tv in an unscheduled visit or i might get a text for half the cost of a school outing next week and that's all fine by me honestly this is incredible really refreshing after this really sad thread i was litigating a custody dispute on behalf of the mother in an incredibly conservative jurisdiction one of the most common ways to get custody was to allege frick or pee addiction because the threshold for it was basically non-existent for this hearing however we lucked out with the judge who i knew from other cases opposing counsel tried to gotcha me into settling before the hearing by showing me surprise obscene texts between mom and her new boyfriend this is of course not law and order and you can't introduce surprise evidence so we go through with the hearing i object to the obscene texts but say i would allow them to be ready into the record in their entirety so the uptight very conservative local attorney gets to spend the next 25 minutes or so reading obscene texts in open court occasionally asking if she could gloss over parts but no i didn't feel it would be appropriate i'll never forget hearing her struggle with the word nipple it's not even a dirty word but this was like the third hearing we had to amend custody because this guy felt his ex-wife having a boyfriend meant she was a freak addict they alleged the obscene texts happened while the kid was in mom's custody but they based that on the time stamp of the screenshots the time stamp on the texts was clearly at a time when the kid was not even around and mom was safe to get freaky over the phone the judge had heard enough of his balls and awarded attorneys fees and put in the order consistent with the vexatious litigant statute that if dad would continue to be liable for her attorney's fees if he kept pushing this crap it was the only joy i got from practicing family law not a lawyer but i sat on the jury of a man who was accused of molesting his ten-year-old niece he elected to testify in his own defense and his defense was i did it but it was her idea it was his third felony strike so he will be spending with luck the rest of his life in prison not a lawyer but this story always gets me my biological grandmother died 20 years ago of ovarian cancer she left all her money trusts bonds to my grandfather to use while alive and disperse after death my grandfather remarried something like 15 years ago to my step-grandma my grandfather ended up dying first a few years back my step-aunt is a greedy bee who lives on the opposite side of the country she's lived off of her mother and my grandfather for all of her life she'd come over and take them on vacation where she'd use their money to buy herself things and get a free skiing trip about 8x a year after my grandfather passed my step-grandma had to move where her children live to get care for dementia my step aunt has access to not only her own mother's estate but my grandfather's as well to take care of her needs that wasn't enough she decided to try and sue my dad and uncle for their dead biological mother's estate my dad is bilaterally paralyzed and in a wheelchair my uncle is a triple bypass survivor with a pacemaker and multiple stints both are on fixed disability income the court date came and i literally wheeled my dad in while my uncle walked with a cane my step-aunt is entirely able-bodied and rolling in the millions my step-grandma and grandfather worked their whole lives to learn the judge took one look at the whole picture and she was absolutely denied access to my biological grandmother's estate we were there for less than an hour dog absolutely frick your aunt not caught the live pd traffic stop i was watching and the guy told the officer i have caffeine pills in my back pocket gets them out puts them on the hood everyone's chill dude then comes clean and says it's molly and the officers look at each other and go do we even have a test kit for that other officer says no dude's face just shows he should have kept his mouth shut i was a very new lawyer with no bankruptcy experience a partner sent me to bankruptcy court to try to make a claim as a creditor related to a 50 million building that was being sold time and lack of knowledge will prevent me from accurately describing everything that went down but i will do my best the court handled my client's claim very quickly and easily at first the court ruled we were not a creditor because our claim was against a tenant which was correct note we had purchased a claim from someone merely to try to somehow wedge our way into buying the property which was very transparent to the court so i could just set back for the remainder of the hearing and watch the two premier bankruptcy attorneys go at it one represented the debtor and the owner of the building the other represented a secured creditor with a lien against the building they absolutely hated each other on a personal level and were arguing with great venom about the plan to sell the real estate there was a small break in the action while the judge took care of another matter when we came back the secured creditor attorney told the court the following one his client the creditor had purchased controlling interest in the debtor the owner of the building two he had been directed to fire the other attorney three he had been directed to withdraw the motion to sell the real estate for he then did both there in the courtroom i have practiced for almost three decades it was the most bad bus thing i had ever seen and was particularly noteworthy because the courtroom was packed with other attorneys watching and those two attorneys absolutely hated each other not a lawyer but this happened to my family my husband's kids asked us to fight for full custody after years of systematic abuse from their mom my step-daughter was physically shamed and assaulted and mom decided to marry a guy who was best friends with the guy who assaulted her mom never told us what happened never got her counseling never reported it to the police in mediation she brought up a conversation i had with her which she denied ever happening until then she started saying lie after lie and all my husband had to say was my wife had that conversation with you to explain how uncomfortable my daughter is living with this man because he is connected to her sexual assault the mediator was not amused she said you have someone living in your house who is connected to your daughter's assault your relationship with your children is broken she spent the rest of the session sobbing and signed away custody because this was just the tip of the iceberg that we had on her and she knew it hearing her sobbing made me so happy after all she put these kids through i had to walk my step-daughter into the police station to report her physically shaming and assault i usually don't want people to suffer but after warning her this guy was coming between her and her kids and then her lying about the context of that conversation will make an exception i tried to stop her from the chain of events that led us to court and she tried to use it against me it's so sad that adults will put other people before their own children or disgusts me good on you guys for getting the kids and that poor girl out of that environment not someone else but himself the guy and his lawyer missed court appearances sometimes one of them sometimes both with little or no warning and with suspect excuses it started getting ridiculous and we kept pointing out holes in his story like he said he left for another country without knowing about the appearance but his lawyer stood in court and said he told him beforehand or all of a sudden he was in a former soviet bloc country for fertility treatments and it would ruin everything if he came back now or when he was visiting dying relatives on another continent or he was going to the airport when he had to rush to the hospital and showed us an admitting form in another language that we translated it showed he was there but also that he was discharged he also tried firing his attorney and saying he needed more time to brief a new attorney who at the next appearance would say he hasn't been able to talk to his client so he needs to adjourn all that he hasn't been paid and his client is basically in but and he needs to be relieved we kept saying to the judge he was doing it to stall but the judge kept giving him the benefit of the doubt we even showed him other cases where he skipped appearances and the judge's threat and sanctions until finally he didn't show up for an appearance where the judge had specifically told him i don't care if you're meeting with the pope i'm ordering you to be here boom his answer was stricken default judgment and full was granted to our side neither he nor his lawyer showed up for the hearing where the judge determined exactly how much of a judgment we should get and then had the nerve to file the motion that the judgment was unfair because he didn't get a chance to dispute anything i remember when i was a kid my dad got a ticket for running a stop sign he decided to fight it because the stop sign was buried in a bush and wasn't visible from the road he and the police officer that had issued the ticket both arrived to court at the appointed time but the judge wasn't there after they waited for about 20 minutes the bailiff finally apologized and told them they could go home and things would be rescheduled just after they had left the judge finally a ride and found both my dad and the police officer in contempt for leaving and wasting her time one eighty dollars traffic ticket became 2.500 contempt of court fines about five years later a friend of mine pulled the same judge for a dui prescription not booze he didn't realize he shouldn't be driving on them he just went without any counsel he said that she said if he was stupid enough to try to represent himself he could sit there and not say anything so he ended up just sitting there and not saying anything and lost his license for a first offense dui there were more than one news article and letters to the editor about what a disaster of a judge she was so i'm sure a lot of other people had similar issues with her not a lawyer but my personal story when i was four i had three older siblings my brothers were 10 and 13. my sister was seven my dad was fighting for custody of all of us as we currently only spent weekends at his but during that time we would all complain about what bad things would happen during the week with our mother ultimately the judge ruled that the kids were old enough to decide where they wanted to be my sister would make my choice for me my mum knew for a fact she would lose all of us this way she was aware all of us preferred our dad it's at this point she stands up in court and says you can have all of them but me isn't even yours so you can't have her my entire family were there nobody had any idea why she would say such a thing a lot of people are crying and my dad is in a state of shock because of this the judge orders a dna test to be done but either way the kids still get to choose at the next court date as his name is present on all of our birth certificates i guess she forgot that day the judge gives this extra time due to the state my dad is in just in case this changes anything for him and whether he will still want custody of me under these new circumstances now it should be noted that my mum was not fond of any of us especially the boys to which he already knew they were a lost cause but she would no longer receive benefits or money from my dad so she needed some kids around at least she took this time to convince my sister that with her brothers gone she would be able to afford all of the things she wanted ice cream toys later bedtimes you name it my brothers chose my dad my sister chose my mum i had a pretty rough upbringing because of her decision and to this day she regrets it she was never treated differently no treats no toys it turns out my mum wasn't lying though he wasn't my biological father according to my family this was a huge weight on him for a very long time he remained an incredible father in my life but sometimes something would happen that would cause an odd or upsetting reaction out of him and that's the sole reason why it really changed his and my life i'm sorry if any of the terms i used were incorrect not a lawyer after all that's fricked up i'm sorry you had to deal with that i have been in dispute with british gas for around 10 years every now and again they take me to court every time i win and we go away for another few years the last time i load up it's in a magistrates even though it's a civil matter my solicitor waited for the british gas guy to swear his oath to tell the truth the whole truth etc then asked him what he knew of the previous court cases when the guy said he didn't know anything about them my solicitor ripped into him saying he just claimed to tell the whole truth so clearly nothing he says can be trusted it went on for a few minutes it was kind of brutal the magistrates agreed and we walked away with 600 pounds in costs it was a joy to watch this bloke who was all we are coming to make entry to your house and the police will help before we went in be told to sit down and not say anything else unless he was asked a question to fend off some of the questions it's to do with a disconnected meter at my house for electric to a closed shop i have written to the ceo i've had my mp involved and been to court four times british gas don't change don't listen so i've given up i'll just go to court every now and again and claim my 600 pounds i just remembered they had to transfer the money electronically as we were going to send the bailiffs in as they took 27 days to pay tbh i was a little disappointed when they paid up bg took my grandparents to court for non-payment of bills my grandparents owned their house from new never had mains gas everything was electric including the heating there was no connection no meter no nothing having tried to explain this calmly a few times on receipt of early bills my grandad quite enjoyed his day in court not a lawyer but i was a jury foreman on a case about five years back guy was accused of attempting to kill his girlfriend various charges up and down the severity were filed however victims testimony wasn't terribly convincing especially after cross and there was only evidence that something had happened in the house that night but not necessarily that the bf had done it anyway defenses turned to present and they unexpectedly recess for the day we come back the next day and the defendant testifies he puts himself at the scene and admits to hitting her we ended up convicting him of everything but attempted murder if i remember right afterwards the judge came into the jury room and told us that the unexpected recess the previous day was because a defendant insisted on testifying against his lawyer and the judge's advice if he hadn't testified basically no chance we would have convicted him play stupid games win stupid prizes ian albert my parents got divorced a few years ago tl dr at the bottom short as possible backstory my dad's a narcissistic prick who emotionally abused us all growing up mum was a sam until i turned 16 and entered the workforce at minimum wage worked up to management dad worked a trade job at an auto company making three 4x as much as her in the six figures at the beginning of proceedings she tried to settle early on she basically wanted enough to cover healthcare because that was her biggest worry financially he basically wanted to give her nothing things got very nasty he hired a horrible cu next tuesday of a lawyer who would constantly insult my mother to her face this pushed mom to ask for much much more than she originally wanted dad was told by his lawyer mom wouldn't get a penny after a year of battle judge hand down final judgment dad has to pay 1500 a month three days after judgement my younger sister is a dad's house mum picks her up asks why he hasn't gone to work yet sister goes in to check on him she finds him barely breathing with vomit all over he had acetaminophen poisoning there was an empty bottle of hydrocodone acetaminophen and another big bottle of tylenol on his nightstand the doctors said there was no way to be 100 how much he had taken because he went to bed early and my sister hadn't seen him for over 12 hours but with the amount still in his blood in the degree of organ failure they could say with 70 sure it was an intentional overdose he did all of this before putting his brand new car in his name alone and before any other payments to mom went through besides splitting the sale of our house and now you're probably thinking there's no way a person could attempt suicide only out of spite but there was no note or anything but when fighting with his sisters over who would make his medical and financial decisions which is a whole other story we found out he wrote his sister a check for 75 000 with a note saying don't let the girls have this meaning my mom and sisters ford is still going after my mother for the car payments the county administrator edit a judge decided to put a third party in charge of all decisions concerning him since it was contested waited nearly two years before letting it get repossessed her credit was tanked my sister who was only 16 at the time is still dealing with ptsd from finding him and this wall of text was just a short version but my dad is still living with the side effects it's basically like he had a very bad stroke he's in an assisted living facility and none of his kids have anything to do with him anymore tl dr attempted suicide to get out of alimony payments is the worst thing i've seen someone do to screw someone else over in court legal professionals have read it what's the funniest way you've ever seen a lawyer or defendant blow a court case i once attended oral arguments for u.s court of appeals for the second circuit it's pretty much the big time i watched a lawyer argue that his client received what's known as ineffective assistance of counsel at the trial from which she was appealing the attorney however was not doing a very good job during oral arguments so at one point one of the judges on the panel leans forward and asks him counsellor are you currently providing ineffective assistance of counsel lawyer was verbally running through the evidence against the guy he was defending trying to claim there wasn't enough to even call a trial all totally fine except he said i believe a more seasoned judge wouldn't have let this trial move forward not knowing that the judge he's speaking to gave the okay to move the trial to this court he was immediately given a hard motion denied personally insulting the judge it's a bold move cotton let's see if it pays off my brother was on a jury back in the days of myspace a woman had been hit by a big rig during foggy weather she was suing for a back injury the last day of the trial they asked her if she has a myspace account and brought up her site for the jury to see i think all the profiles were opened then there's a picture of her dancing on the hood of a car and right next to it is a text exchange of her saying that she shouldn't go out too much because her lawyer says that she has to look injured needless to say she lost that case a short one the judge recused himself from a criminal case publicly stating that he knew the defendant and he was a son of a b and guilty as heck a funny historical one here marshall knee is on trial for treason after napoleon gets overthrown for the second time his lawyer desperately tries to save a martial's life with an unusual take on things due to her border change marshall nee's hometown was at the time of the trial in prussia therefore argued the lawyer martial knee was not technically french and accordingly could not be guilty of treason martial new disagreed and shouted out to the court i am french and i will remain french he was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to death this also has a double whammy with badass last words he asked for and was given permission to let his own firing squad his last words to them were soldiers when i give a command to fire fire straight at my heart wait for the order it will be my last to you i protest against my condemnation i have fought a hundred battles for france and not one against her soldiers fire talk about a way to die marshall knee is forever immortalized in the halls of badassery say what you will about the french but they have a long history of military conquest and bad asm like this not my case but still a personal favorite i was sitting in court waiting for my turn case going was a lettering case officer said he saw the defendant throw the clear wrapper on a pack of gum out of his window guy decided to defend himself girlfriend takes the stand officer has already testified guy asks did i throw a gum wrapper out the window she replies no you did not with this huge grin on her face the defendant is now also grinning and goes what did i throw out the window to which she replies it was the plastic wrapper from your cigarettes guy rests his case right there literally thought he would get off because the officer couldn't properly identify the clear plastic that he admits to throwing out the window anyone who represents themself in court has an idiot for a client i had a case where a lawyer who apparently had expertise in areas other than litigation decided to litigate a case for one of his clients he asks to depose my guy no problem i meet with my guy and get him all prepared for testimony we sit down at the deposition he's sworn in and we're ready to go first question isn't would you please state your name or anything like that first question was something like isn't it the truth in this case that on the 6th of april 2004 you and then a conclusory statement about his whole claim i objected my guy says number other lawyer shuffled his papers and after a lengthy pause asks the second question you sure i represent school districts one of my clients has a farm that is used to teach agricultural science to the students the manager of the farm decides to brutally euthanize a ton of chickens in full view of a group of elementary school students sometimes farms have to euthanize chickens that wasn't the problem the problem was that he was whacking the chickens over the head with a hammer and he had to whack each chicken like five six times before they died because he is apparently some kind of psychopath the poor chickens were not dying that didn't deter him if one refused to die he'd just toss the chicken on the ground and try again with another one but the birds were all getting horrifically damaged so they were flapping in circles on the ground or walking with terrible stuttering limps or screaming one of the kids recorded it in jesus christ it was awful to watch so i recommended the school district fire him immediately because holy heck he sued for gender discrimination good lord it's not that difficult to kill an animal just break its neck ffs my father is an attorney and he always had a story for us when we'd ask him this question he tells it way better than i do but i'll give it a shot some dude was allegedly smashing a wall with a sledgehammer with others in order to break into a private property the cops rolled up and he's the only one to get caught fast forward a few months and this guy's in court apparently a cop says something about how the defendant was the only one caught but there were two other men who fled on foot and couldn't be apprehended my father's client's face lights up in an aha moment and immediately tells the judge not true there were four of us i guess he thought if he could disprove someone at the said head be let go safe to say he was found guilty of vandalism my father says the judge just kind of sighed and told my father it would be a good idea to keep his client quiet i made this mistake once asked for a copy of the complaint against me lo and behold i was accused of driving an unregistered four-door pickup mind registered truck has two doors i gleefully pointed this glaring error out to the prosecutor who proceeded to fix the mistake and submit the correct info judge gave me half off the fine though i was the respondent not the lawyer in a civil case where the county accused me of violating a rule that a house cannot have more than two parties in a month the county's prime witness admitted understand that one the rule was implemented specifically in response to a complaint against me too the rule was not written in the county code three the rule was not included in my warning letter nor in my citation for the county had no expectation of ever applying this rule to any other resident in the future the judge declared the rule null and void not an exact fit for the answer but i once worked at a company where we found out that a lawyer was trying to arrange a class action suit against us before it got off the ground we found out because this lawyer attempted to email her client but accidentally emailed us instead with all the details of the class action maybe he was trying to show everyone that he was a team player for the company by sabotaging a potential class action suit against them i observed a case where the plaintiff attorney played michael jackson's man in the mirror as his closing argument to evoke an emotional response in the jury he lost you may give your closing argument alexa play despacito not a legal professional but i do have a good story on this topic 15 or so years ago my dad was the manager of a small hotel one of the semi-regular customers was this big samoan dude who booked in for a day at a time always had a few visitors and always paid in cash in a one-to-one conversion with american dollars highly unusual in australia dad always said he was a great customer very friendly with the staff never gave anyone any problems and always had a bit of a chat when he checked in one day a couple of detectives rocked up and asked to speak to my dad they showed him a photo of the aforementioned customer and asked if he was currently staying in the hotel and dad confirmed that he was and in a matter of minutes a small contingent of cops arrived stormed the room and escorted the guy away in handcuffs turns out the guy was a pretty major drug dealer and was wanted in a couple of states cut to the court date quite some time later my dad is in the witness stand and for whatever reason the defense is trying to make out like my dad didn't know the defendant and had never seen him before obviously my dad insisted that he did in fact know the defendant but that line persisted from the defense as my dad left the witness box he walked past the defendant and said hi barry to which barry enthusiastically replied hi jason how are you while i'm sure this wasn't the only thing that counted against him in the case it certainly can't have helped he ended up getting quite a few years in jail names changed obs the guy may have known that his goose was cooked and a detail like this would not have made a difference i'm an attorney and i heard about a hearing where there were several criminal defendants before the judge the judge noticed a strong pot smell in the courtroom and asked if any of the defendants had pot on them no one came forward and the judge proceeded but the odour became stronger and stronger finally the judge demanded the perpetrator to come forward finally one of the came forward and had several bags of weed on him i'm not sure what the charges were before him that day but i wouldn't want to have been his attorney a defense lawyer was delivering her closing statements to the jury in her final sentence she said ladies and gentlemen of the jury i urge you to find my client guilty there was a moment of silence and she then says not guilty i meant to say not guilty after argument from the assistant district attorney the judge asked defense counsel why he should allow the defendant to remain on his own recognizance defense counsel looks up obviously searching for any reason he can because he knows his client is a dirtbag and this is what he comes up with because his girlfriend lives in the apartment above mine and i'll hear her crying all night defendant romander to jail not me not a legal professional but my brother's emt instructor used to live in chicago this one's a 2-4 the instructor himself had had his license suspended for numerous traffic charges including evading police but forgot about his arraignment date until about an hour prior so the guy hops on motorcycle and drives himself to the court remember this for later the dude in the court right before him is a hispanic guy the judge reads off everything he's charged with and then the conversation goes like this judge mr gonzalez how do you plead gonzales no hablo ingles judge mr gonzalez do you understand a word i'm saying gonzales no hablo ingles judge mr gonzalez am i to understand that this whole time no one has bothered to get a translator for you gonzales no hablo ingles judge well i guess if you can't understand what you're charged with we'll have to drop all the charges gonzales gracious sena starts walking out judge get back in here after him the instructor goes up judge reads his charges and then asks him how he got to the court that day instructor oh my brother gave me a ride judge is that right instructor yes your honor judge looking at the bailiff do you have that footage from parking deck 3 he then proceeds to play cctv footage of him showing up on the exact same bike that he was using for all when he ran from the cops his license remained suspended and the judge told him he couldn't go anywhere near the bike during that time there was even a cop standing next to it when he left that no hablo ingles sounds like it could be from a scene in a comedy tv show with the audience laughing when the judge tells him to get back here and the end music and credits roll i worked as a paralegal in a firm specializing in land use litigation and real estate another paralegal's husband got a dwi and as a favor to her one of the partners offered to defend her husband in court this is a small town with a landmark windmill in the center of town well this paralegal's husbands who we all called the missing link dwi stemmed from him crashing his car into the windmill front page of the local paper reporters at the arraignment the whole nine yards so the law firm partner tells the missing link that when the judge asks him how many beers he had before his accident he should tell her he had three he proceeds to stand in front of the judge and tell her he had three cases the whole room started laughing and he ended up getting jail time that person must have been quite the alcoholic to think that three cases sounded reasonable i'm a bankruptcy paralegal i used to work for a chapter 13 trustee who told me this story a debtor who had filed a chapter 7 bankruptcy was going through the normal questions at his 341 meeting this meeting is a hearing without a judge where the trustee asks debtor simple questions regarding their situation and the paperwork they've filed creditors may also question the debtor but other than the irs none ever show up and when i was there the irs representative always fell asleep and i'd have to wake her when one of the cases she was there for was called for the most part it takes no more than five minutes per case the hearing basically exists for the debtor to affirm under oath that to the best of their knowledge their paperwork is complete and accurate and for the trustee to address any issues he has with the case before the case is confirmed and allowed to take its natural course with few exceptions an attorney has done all their paperwork for them and is with them representing them at this hearing it's all very straightforward and a non-event for the most part one document that the debtors have to provide lists all their personal property another document they provide is used to protect their property as in bankruptcy you're still allowed to keep your stuff your car and your house provided the value of these things is within certain limits or meets various criteria most people don't have to give up any property at all however in a chapter 7 a trustee can seize any of your property that is not protected this would be property that is worth more than the values that are allowed all that is not protected by other factors such as being exempt from seizure for various reasons provided by the law the trustee can also seize property if it could be protected but the debtor has failed to fill out the correct paperwork to create that protection i'm oversimplifying but that's the gist of it but again very few people lose anything at all anyway in his paperwork the debtor in this story failed to disclose one item in particular and had also failed to include it in the paperwork that would have protected it and that is why he was forced to remove the rolex from his wrist and hand it over to the trustee right then and there when i was clarking for a judge a defendant wrote to the judge trying to explain that the two bongs found on the floorboard of the car were actually his girlfriends but he was afraid to speak up earlier because she is on section 8 and drugs are forbidden for section 8 recipients mind you he was on probation at the time the cops pulled him over and it didn't matter who owned the bongs he was still in violation of his probation for being in possession of drug paraphernalia his attempt to get out from his charges not only screwed over his girlfriend but it also showed that he knew of the bongs that were in her s car landlord didn't want to sue for eviction under her name because she was collecting rent in cash and not declaring it while her building was in foreclosure so she had her accountant who apparently thought there is such thing as client account and privilege and that kind of things you the tenants in his name so this random accountant shows up at eviction court with the tenants his name isn't attached to the building or the leases in any way but he swears he can get the landlord on the phone to vouch that he's authorized to do this in her name the judge dismissed the case with no prejudice you can't borrow someone else's name to sue someone if you're trying to do illegal things under your own name or at all for that matter not a defendant but there was this dude in the court i interned as who went in with his friend but wore a shirt with the exact color as the ones in group trials the bailiff mistook him for a convict and was asking him to sit down heck no man i'm just here to see my friend i ain't got no case he was the one who got caught i got away number no he didn't get away capital f i have a bunch but my favorite is a group of llc members who refuse to hire a lawyer for the company as required by the local rules they keep getting their filing stricken it's to the point where the judge doesn't even set a hearing anymore they file whatever they file i move to strike and the court enters an order striking it i was still in law school working for a solo practitioner part-time we had this divorce where dude got caught cheating and his wife cleaned out the bank account which was the only marital asset to pay for her attorney's fees there was absolutely no reason for her to pay that much for an attorney and due to that the attorney on the other side was inflaming her client to fight on every little issue to earn that retainer now our dude was also stupid he didn't pay the court-ordered temporary child support order and due to that he had to pay some of her attorney's fees but after all that is dealt we have a date to hear arguments on anything not agreed to our biggest point is he'll pay the support order but she owes him half the bank account amount we get in front of the judge and she tried to argue that she used the money to pay for a new place and moving fees bulls we had the financial statement where wife stated she paid pretty much the whole amount as a retainer judge turns around looks at the attorney in the face and tells her that her signature is on the financial statement meaning that either she lied on the statement or she is lying right now judge tells her to think very carefully about her next statement and that's in her opinion wife needed to pay half the money back other attorney goes quiet asks for a recess and completely changes her resolution position we basically had her by the balls because she knew if we wanted to this could amount to a bar complaint as she made a false statement to the tribunal we got him back all his money and he got to claim his child for the next five years on his taxes honestly felt bad for the wife she had no freaking clue how badly her attorney was freaking her over but this among other things is why i refuse to practice family law i am a lawyer now but this was when i was in law school and we had to go watch actual court cases in the local district court a guy is accused of destroying some stuff his neighbor owns after a complicated plea by his lawyer about how some evidence is inadmissible and therefore it cannot be proven the defendant is guilty the judge delivers the verdict agrees with the lawyers and acquits him but the defendant gets up walks towards the judge as if to shake his hand and says thank you your honor i'll never do it again the prosecutor then quasi jokingly says appeal [Music] in courtroom where all they do is restraining orders everyone gets there at one time in the morning and sits in the chairs and judge calls the cases one by one dude purposely sits next to girl getting the restraining order against him and starts trying to hold her hand and crap she yells and asks for help and bro had to wait outside when it was his turn the judge was so mad he almost sent him to jail everything else in this thread is making me chuckle this one made me freaking rage i wasn't the lawyer but a paid expert witness as our lawyer questioned the federal employee environmental law case our client jumped up from the table and screamed in his broken english there to see shia freaking lies like a w it finds were paid but we did win the case must have been a good lawyer i was working for a barrister who turned up to a hearing and discovered that opposing counsel had secretly contacted the judge's chambers with a whole bunch of information about the case that's a horrendous breach of professional ethics one of the very very basic rules of litigation is that you file stuff with both the judge and the other side except in very special circumstances my barrister just kind of shrugged his shoulders at the judge when asked if he knew about the information the judge spent the rest of the hearing tearing the opposition apart they lost an absolutely unlucerable case i was working as court staff in a hearing where a guy was accused of robbing a grocery store the defendant's lawyer was arguing that they could not identify the man in the surveillance camera footage as his client while the footage was being shown to the court the defendant leaned over and said loud enough to his lawyer do you think they can tell that's me in the video saw a lawyer schedule a preliminary trial on a non-criminal court day these days were reserved for family traffic etc the lawyer insisted by not doing so it was a violation of his client's right to a speedy trial he was in custody at jail and needed to be transported about two hours out of town for this court case the judge knew the lawyer would be late he was always late so when the inmate arrived to court on the scheduled non-criminal court day the lawyer was you guessed it late once the defendant was in process to the courtroom the judge immediately told the clerks to not call the lawyer's office and he started looking at his watch after about 10 minutes the judge called it and we out processed the prisoner to the transport vehicle by the time the prisoner was moving off the property the lawyer pulled into the parking lot there was a closed door session between the judge and lawyer to be a fly on the wall for that convo i feel really bad for the person in custody it's not fair for them to be punished because they have a shitty lawyer regardless of what they are accused of they have a right to adequate representation sovereign citizens always make for a good time there was the guy getting a divorce from his wife of 25 years his entire argument for why he shouldn't pay alimony to his wife who stayed home taking care of their eight kids three of whom were still at home is that since his wife would no longer do her marital duties it wasn't a marriage she wouldn't sleep with him because he was against trying to prevent more kids happening at all then reference the bible on top of it the judge's face was priceless defendant was willing to stay on probation conditioned on jail until a bed became available due to the circumstances of the defendant's age and minor violations the judge was very open to the possibility so this was argued out in rebuttal to the defense lawyers argument the prosecutor said something the defendant didn't like the defendant stood up called us all racists and said send my freaking book to prison you know that scene where jerry maguire pleads with rod to help me help you it was 100 x worse i was an expert engineer witness at a position defending a contractor who happened to be an engineer himself plaintiff claimed he was liable as an engineer as well as the contractor defense was he was the contractor but that doesn't mean he was the engineer for the project just because he was one after six hours of headache inducing questioning plaintiff's lawyer pulls out a letter from and certified by the contractor that simply stated i am the engineer for the project he sits back and basically has that look of let's see what you've got to say namfa defendant is apprehended for warrants and asks judge for bail tells judge he moved and was not served with the warrants some question as to his identity judge asks defendant where he was born death says puerto rico defendant totally looks mestizo not puerto rican at all judge asks where in puerto rico defendant says san juan judge asks defendant when were you last in san juan defendant says a couple of years ago judge asked defendant how did you get their defendant replies i went on the amtrak judge would not grant bail when you flunk geography it's for a long time lawyers of reddit what is the most morally challenging case that you've worked on ugg well fresh after law school i worked on a case where the people involved were sketchy in every possible way my role was very limited i was just helping with some securities filings the problem was that nothing quite added up and when i brought the discrepancies over to my boss she just told me to put the information in anyway she was very friendly with the client we saw him at our office all the goddamn time as he'd often just drop by to chat and hang years later the company folded in a manner of speaking and their clients many of whom were quite vulnerable lost hundreds of millions of dollars i was not at all surprised my boss was someone whom i had dreamed of reporting for years for that and other sketchiness but she was slippery enough never to do anything wrong that didn't carry some level of plausible deniability additionally i'd always felt like i had zero idea of what i was doing as a student and then first first-year associate there further still i felt powerless against someone who had built herself quite a reputation within the legal community here and who had been known to act vindictively toward anyone who crossed her in the past in any case i do think about that old file often it's not the only one we worked on at that old firm that eventually blew up in a bad way it's also really not great to feel like you may have helped legitimize an entirely and to me obviously fraudulent operation my experience there definitely jaded me quite a bit even compared to other junior lawyers when i was about to start college back in the 90s i took a legal receptionist job in a legal defense firm in my little southern town i would work answering the phones until 1pm and then after that i would tag along with one of the lawyers for a few unpaid hours and watch them do their jobs in court everyone was very nice and did me a huge favor because the experience gave me enough information to learn that being a lawyer wasn't for me it turns out that i can't handle watching people be crushed by the system i could handle the murder trials drug charges and real estate squabbling no problem it was watching poor people get ground up over minor offenses or simple mistakes little things that would haunt them for the rest of their lives one particular case stood out to me there was shooting and the crowd had gathered around the body a detective was asking people in the crowd if they'd seen anything our defendant said yes when he hadn't seen anything really but he just wanted to help he was a simple-minded person but never formally diagnosed with anything largely due to the lack of services in my town and the fact that he dropped out of school early when i met him it was clear that he was a sweet person who really liked people but was dealing with a low iq and some reasoning issues the detective separated our defendant from the crowd and started questioning him after a few minutes it was clear that the defendant was just giving answers that he thought the detective would want to hear he really wanted to make the detective happy instead of just dismissing the guy the detective arrested him for giving false information he had a few minor thefts on his record again he had reasoning issues so he was really looking at serious jail time because he talked to the police again this dude just liked talking to people and didn't know better he had no diagnosis or health records to back up any claim of mental deficiencies and anything resembling that would cost money he didn't have a time in a statemental facility he lived with a relative who was equally broke his lawyer was contemplating a guilty plea because he'd lied directly to a police officer and admitted it i left before the case got resolved but it's the one i still think about this guy was largely harmless and was likely going to spend at least some time in serious jail where the outcome would likely have been very bad for him the thing that stuck with me was how unnecessary it all was it was suffering for literally no purpose putting him in jail was not going to magically give that guy better cognitive skills other than making him distrust people if anything this should make you livid with that detective they did that just to have an easier rest i knew someone who worked on a morally disappointing case basically a woman was physically shamed and assaulted it was obvious that the guy did it the woman was clearly distraught and the guy just acted guilty my friend said from the bottom of his heart he could just tell like the rest of the jury but the case was years old on top of her waiting to press charges in the end the grand jury couldn't send it to court simply not enough evidence it was all hearsay the way my friend told of the jury was extremely distraught lost trust in the system and the likes and they just felt so disgusted like they should send this guide to court and they had the power to do so but they just couldn't mlms are considered pyramid schemes in my country and both are banned in order to protect consumers it's a crime to establish an mlm public prosecution here got wind of an mlm operating and shut it down closing up the premises and everything my firm was hired by the mlm to defend their case and establish to the public prosecution that they should be able to continue to operate i had to prep all the defenses while absolutely despising mlms and thinking that they're run and operated by predatory pieces of crap we had several high up employees from the mlm's head office in the u.s fly halfway across the world to us multiple times for status update meetings lasting 15-30 minutes or so that could have literally been done over email or conference call nope they just had so much money to burn off the backs of vulnerable people who have zero chance of succeeding in their business that a gang of them would fly over every so often to ask so how's it going i thanked my lucky stars every time the public prosecution rejected one of our arguments and eventually the mlm gave up and cleared out of the country never been so happy that my arguments were unsuccessful i want to go to there a close relative was a judge in a pretty small town in the 80s there was a case drug deal gone bad i guess one guy went to his dealer's trailer guy planned to rob dealer not only take his drugs but his money as well dealer picked up on that plan quickly and pulled out a gun at first guy pulled out his gun as well both died suicide by stupidity really the families ended up suing each other for wrongful death relatives spent a couple of days going over the law before they arrived in court each wanting to get rid of the other for money relative while on the bench no less said something to the effect or they both did society a favor by removing themselves from our society early eight is not a chance for that statement to go viral the way it would now but you can bet the week following the letters to the editor in the local paper blew up i only include this because the prosecutor was laughing so hard he had to excuse himself from the room when the judge made the comment i was born and raised catholic married into a very prominent catholic family i joined the firm that was representing physical shaming victims i initially stayed out because the bishop who was in charge of the bad priest married my wife and me but the more i observed the case and his lying i couldn't sit by when the case was dismissed at the trial level the partner asked me to write the appellate briefs because that was my forte i did and the dismissal was reversed and the church quickly settled highlight of my career and spiritual life jesus had the harshest condemnations for people who harm children i used to do a lot of enforcement court cases where we would use lines in properties to cover loses on loans on behalf of our clients banks and such had one case where the debtor was very eager to talk about the debt and how he really wanted to repay our client according to the agreed repayment plan how he was trying to come up with a way to get the money etc etc the meeting dragged on for an hour these cases usually took less than 10 minutes since the debtor very rarely had any other way of repaying the loan and he seemed very eager to tell me about why he was in debt in the first place i finally asked him out of curiosity why he had taken out the debt and it turned out his son who was around my age had terminal cancer and he and his wife had sold everything they owned and took out huge loans with their house as security to provide him with the best possible treatment and eventually hospice and as he said it now my son is gone but the debt is not all i could do was warn him about the planned foreclosure four weeks later if he did not find a way to repay as promised turned out he did find a way to come up with the money but i still think a lot about that case the professor of a business law class told my class this story at one time he was the attorney that represented my hometown government on legal matters there was once a case where police officers from my hometown were chasing a suspect the suspect opened fire and they returned fire after it was all said and done they realized that one of the bullets from the cops gun had inadvertently killed an innocent bystander the family of the bystander sued apparently she was transient and a drug addict and had been in the area to try and score drugs or the family's attorney was asking for millions in restitution my professor said he was scared shitless about having to go before a jury and state that the family of the woman did not deserve such a high amount of restitution because being a drug addict the woman's life really had no monetary value to begin with thankfully the city and the family settled out of court i can only imagine how crappy my professor would have felt if he had actually been compelled to make that argument to the jury who wants to say to a jury and to family in the court gallery that someone's life had no value in some areas of law you get a bit of everything i'm in one of those areas i do not do family law but i had one case where an ex-husband and ex-wife were against each other both were completely fraudulent both were trying to use their young daughter against the other one was a chronic cheater opportunist and the other was constantly high or drunk and constantly trying to access his former wife's financials she was quite well off when they got together but this was not a divorce case but due to the nature of the case all attorneys involved were privy to the entire record of their divorce i feel like our client edged out our opposition very minutely in being a slightly better person but it was a hollow victory como i do not do family law best decision you've made since the disastrous choice to become an attorney i defended a man accused of abusing his gf and it was the third time he'd been charged in the same relationship it was obvious he was guilty but the gf essentially was under his spell and stopped cooperating obvious pattern of some pretty serious abuse eonal but i have enough experience with dv victims to know that that's textbook abuse victim behavior it makes my blood boil that our legal system hasn't been changed to account for that because it's virtually impossible for a victim to get out of the situation without testifying in the presence of their abuser who most likely is very good at manipulating them i worked seven months at a criminal defense firm while i was at university two cases stayed with me and are reasons i will never practice in criminal law the first was a teenage boy who egged on by his friends forced his five-year-old brother while filming to give him fellatio the client came in with his parents and showed zero remorse he didn't care he was asked how he felt about it and he said he didn't know the real kicker to me was the five-year-old was in the lobby outside while they interviewed and they were all still in the same house the client was given some offender classes and let go mitigating factors were considered in his sentencing that meant he was barely punished the next was what i feel to be a huge miscarriage of justice an adult male committed horrific domestic violence strangling his partner throwing her through a shower screen beating her and the woman's child heard this and called police because she was in no state to do anything turns out this is the second woman he had done the exact same thing too the first time he received court ordered anger management and domestic violence classes this time he received the same and a suspended sentence the client was so blase about it he was advised he might go to jail and should get his affairs in order he ignored that and laughed in his solicitor's face while his father who was paying his legal fees just hung his head and didn't know what to do i don't know why the client didn't go to jail an act of god meant the female prosecutor didn't ask for a custodial sentence defended a guy charged with child physical shaming not the challenging part he clearly did not do it he was however an admitted and convicted diddler from an earlier case yuck but everyone is entitled to a defense and this guy clearly didn't do this one so why challenging he so clearly didn't do this one that as the case developed the prosecutor realized he didn't do it but this was in the last two months or so before the prosecutor's re-election in a roundabout didn't say it big clearly conveyed it manner prosecutor communicated in effect leave it alone until after the election and it will go away client was in jail and couldn't make bail we let the case delay election passed and a couple of days later charges were dismissed it sucked bill had we tried to fight it client might well have been convicted by a jury since he had a previous conviction and he could have went away for over 10 years for something he didn't do eonal but the guy who got the crap end of the stick on this a couple of years ago my grandpa passed and transfer on death deed at his house to my mom a couple of months ago my mom died and todd the home to me yay me right well problem is that medicaid has what's called a state recovery which applies for any medical costs incurred between the ages of 55 and 65 or nursing homes at any age estate recovery takes whatever property you own and my mom was diagnosed with cancer when she was 60 grandpa died when my mom was 63 since she was dying soon she didn't want the house had no need for it all the means to upkeep it but medicaid also has rules against declining gifts and transferring assets because she had cancer she was left with no choice except to accept the house which she didn't want because she had cancer while i agree with the morality of both estate recovery and transfer rules in her case they literally took away her right to choose because she had cancer which seems more than immoral to me now because my mom had brain cancer i have to deal with the legal ramifications of the situation i did nothing much less nothing wrong yet i have to navigate a legal tightrope which has the potential to end very poorly for me and my family and will at the least cost me thousands all because my mom had cancer at the wrong age and my grandpa died at the wrong time video editor not a lawyer i make lots of tapes for lawyers harsh depositions evidentiary stuff getting to the good stuff in a 12-hour surveillance tape i have even had to pixel at everyone's face but the suspects in hospital surveillance tape due to hipaa sometimes the state will ask me to recover very bad audio from criminal investigations or see if i can see fraudulent editing on a tape debunker james o'keefe copycat i don't see the whole case and never know the outcomes i just get a ton of raw input video can lion soak in mine a thing i felt bad about was working for the defense in a civil suit new worker had his legs crushed at a loading dock we get our cameras and are working for the company to show how the loading dock is supposed to be done and all their safety equipment working they have their best guide to demo the stuff the old sold employee you can't make the safety latches work out two of the three loading docks the one that does work doesn't work reliably it is obvious they never use this stuff but the video is edited and it looks like the company and safety equipment are slick and functional run by the most seasoned pros i work defense before becoming a prosecutor two years ago the hardest case was a guy who was accused of physically shaming his family friends daughters who were five at the time he hired us he didn't want to register as a diddler and didn't want to do any jail time we knew he did it we heard his interview with the police yet we had to defend him to the best of our ability we trawled through the family friends facebook accounts finding options and suggestive photos to show that the kids learned this on their own we said they were coached by their vindictive grandmother it felt disgusting and repugnant it was our job but dang it left a bad taste in my mouth i left and became a domestic violence and physical shaming and assault prosecutor which i still do my answer is a bit different since i've thankfully never had a truly morally challenging case that is representing someone or something absolutely reprehensible sure there's been some injury defense cases or cases where someone got screwed by a deal but we always recommended the client or their insurance pay up and not drag it out the most challenging was this case where man was sick with cancer and sued every possible product he encountered this is very typical in product liability cases plaintiffs will cast a wide net and then over the course of discovery you narrow down to a list of a handful of likely suspects my client thankfully was highly unlikely for reasons i won't elaborate upon for obvious reasons the morally challenging moment came when i was chatting with my boss one afternoon about scheduling depositions discussing how plaintiff clearly lied about is because of abc and joking around about something unrelated when our phones both buzz at the same time we both got an email plaintiff has died and his attorney and family were going to refile as a wrongful death case there was a beat where we just stood there in silence before my boss gave me instructions for advising the client while he made phone calls to the other party's council that moment hit me hard over time not because i thought my client had anything to do with the disease i genuinely believe it didn't rather it was a combination of two things first it was the first time someone i actually met a deposition in the course of work died mid case usually in my cases someone would either already be dead or just have injuries they recovered from second it was the fact that by necessity we only had a moment to take in plaintiff's death before treating it like a litigation event to deal with a few months later i left that practice area behind for business dispute litigation instead tl dr incestuous debitry i was fresh out of uni and the office i worked at had this potential client who was getting charged with violating his daughter minor at the time of the alleged fact this man cried in front of us denying it saying that his ex-wife was conspiring against him alienating his daughter into pressing false charges at the time i was dumb i was very very dumb and i had just finished reading codigo davida a biography of one of our ex-minister of justice in which he told a story of a very similar case a mother making false claims of debauchery against the father and ever forcing the kids to lie about it so i voted yes to accept the client and we did we made the defense and claimed not guilty of course the client who was an old man btw assured us that he was innocent and the facts had happened some years prior so no dna no video photo no nothing just witness and the victim court date goes on the victim was called to testify she was 20 yo at the time of this and was testifying without the knowing her father were there outside the room my colleague decided to confront her about it and ask if she would be able to look in her father's eyes who was standing out there and repeat what she was saying this girl started to immediately cry and shake at the mere thought of facing her father repeating frenetically that she wanted nothing with that monster i felt like a monster too i felt wrong and worse mine was the vote that made us accept that man as our client so in a way it was my fault that we were at that situation i know that we are supposed to defend wrong people and as an intern i had my share of scum cargo robbers drug dealers a murderer but that felt worse way worse till this day i've never accepted another crime case involving devatory not that he got many after that if it makes you feel better even if your vote was why he became your client in specific if it wasn't you representing him it would be someone else who cared less or was strapped enough the daughter likely still would have been in that position no matter who was representing him going to get down voted to crap for this because of who we were hired to defend one of my co-workers fellow attorney was hired by a man in possession of child pornography to defend him the guy allegedly used to work for the police be whoever to catch people in possession of child pornography and trace it back to the source to try to catch the people making it however when he retired he decided he wanted to keep doing it as a vigilante allegedly i have no idea if he actually turned anything he found into the police he got caught when he took his computer in for service at a local shop we were all had big bad feels about this case to be honest we all fully believed his story did not add up and thought he was going to jail but he hired us so we had to throw something at the wall at least i don't know how the case ended since i quit the firm before the case went to trial but i came home sick to my stomach every day while i worked on that defense not me but a friend from university who was is and i don't mean this pejoratively a do-gooder looking to make the world a better place a few years after the fact he told me about one of his earlier cases as a public defender his client was a clean-cut good-looking kid from a lower middle-class family up on a public mischief charge vandalism he brought the kid a clean dress shirt and tie for his initial court appearance when the kid took off his t-shirt to change into it big old nazi eagle tattoo on his back according to my friend after helping get the kid community service he had to go into the men's room and vomit warning references to chili p and physical shaming and assault i'm not a lawyer but i was the person who reported the crime and also the primary witness i was subpoenaed and there for the trial i still struggle from time to time with what happened i worked at a major electronics store a customer brought in a laptop and asked me to back everything up the dvd i did it but the file names looked extremely suspect one video was named payoffly at dart mp4 and another was one three-year-old r at pedbeungle.mov so i called the cops they showed up and took my statement and i ended up being subpoenaed as a witness months and months went by and i finally had to show up for court i get there and i have to face the accused the laptop had recently been given to the family's adopted son for his 18th birthday a few weeks later my report ended up getting him tried as an adult and put on a diddler registry he broke the law he was in possession of seriously troubling illegal materials but he was still a kid from time to time i still sit around and think about whether or not i had any other options i don't think i did but i still hate that i was the one that had to make the call if you are new to the channel you can subscribe i publish new videos every day until then check another video so bye for now

Channel: OnTap Studios

Views: 215,253

Rating: 4.7766881 out of 5

Keywords: lawyer, courthouse wedding, courthouse, courthouse escape, lawyer reacts, lawyer stories, lawyer stories reddit, lawyer stories funny, #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, sub, reddit cringe, memes, dankify, updoot everything, updoot reddit, chill, story, stories, reddit on tap, reddit stories 2021

Id: kugpKaDmrls

Length: 172min 10sec (10330 seconds)

Published: Sat May 01 2021