40 Legal Disasters That Show Why You Should Think Before You Speak

A defence lawyer was delivering her closing statement 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!".

A prominent female attorney didn't like the judge's ruling in a family law case. She asked him if he was from another planet. The judge said I beg your pardon? She approached the bench (without permission) and very rudely repeated her question. Judge told her to apologize. She refused. The judge had her thrown in the lock up for contempt of court.

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 5-6 times before they died because he’s 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 and Jesus Christ it was awful to watch.

So, I recommended the school district fire him immediately because holy hell.

He sued. For GENDER DISCRIMINATION.

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 husband’s (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.

I remember being in child support court and saw a guy going in front of the judge for non payment of child support with his world’s greatest dad shirt on....

I went to court with a friend who was really nervous, and just needed someone to sit with him. D**g court was VERY interesting.

One girl was there with her mom who kept trying to speak for her. The judge would ask a question, the mom would answer. The judge would remind the mother that her daughter was 18, and could speak for herself.

This mom would NOT listen, and was pissing the judge off. The mom even started getting an attitude with the judge and started saying, “she’s a child, she’s scared” the judge was like ma’am she’s 18. She’s not a child anymore. He finally threatened her with contempt of court and that got her to be quiet.

The girl ended up getting a slightly harsher punishment than the other people pleading youthful offender, and I defiantly think her mom helped with that. Instead of having d**g test once a month that are 50$, she was put on color code.

This seemed to make the mom mad who tried to say something again, but this time the daughter elbowed her.

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 odor 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.

Not my case, but still a personal favorite.

I was sitting in court waiting for my turn. Case going was a littering 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.

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.

Flashing a gun at the witness during a deposition.

I once attended oral arguments for US 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 "counselor, are you currently providing ineffective assistance of counsel?".

I saw the cops blow it once. A high school friend got a speeding ticket and he ended up in court questioning the cop. Asked where the cop was situated when he clocked him (sitting under an underpass), would you say it was dangerous to speed in that situation (yes, traffic was heavy), do you remember me saying at the stop there was another vehicle same make, model, and close in color as mine (yes), how can you be sure you pulled over the right one (between clocking the vehicle and pulling it over I never took my eyes off of it).

At this point my friend says, After the stop if I had pulled quickly onto the highway from the shoulder without looking at traffic in the rightmost lane I was entering, would you say that was dangerous and something you might pull me over for again?

The cop is like, Uh, yea, if I saw you do that it would be unsafe and I'd pull you over again and give you another ticket. Are you admitting that's what you did?

My friend: Are you testifying that you would never pull out onto traffic without checking the rightmost lane you were merging into?

Cop: Yes, I wouldn't do that.

Friend: So it's safe to say that when you pulled out to chase me, you definitely did so safely? You already said the traffic was dense, so are you sure you didn't just fly out into traffic and possibly almost hit someone?

Cop, smugly: Uh, no. I'm quite sure I didn't almost hit someone or pull out in a dangerous fashion. What does this have to do with anything?

Friend: Well, you said earlier that you never took your eyes off the vehicle you clocked. Now you're saying that you entered the roadway safely because you checked the lane you were merging into. Can you please explain how it is that you managed to keep your eyes on a speeding vehicle in dense traffic retreating from you at a high rate of speed and looked in your side mirror & rear view, or over your shoulder, and merged safely?

Cop: I, uhh, I mean, it's possible…

He just kind of looked pleadingly at the DA at this point. Judge had had enough, reamed my friend but dismissed the ticket.

The accused was being sentenced after a common suggestion by both the crown and defence attorneys. When it came to calculating the total amount of days to be purged according to each infraction, the defence attorney started arguing that the crown had her numbers wrong and that the sentence was supposed to be 75 days LONGER than what was about to be agreed upon. The accused’s jaw just dropped in disbelief.

Lawyer showed up 45 min late for court, just to reschedule it because she didn't have time to talk to defendant prior to court. Next court date, showed up late again, and proceeded, despite still not having time to talk to defendant before hand.

Twist? Was my lawyer. Second time she was late I got to facepalm as I listened to judge and bailiff joke about what a crackpot my public defender was.

Barrister: “a leopard never changes it’s spots”
Defendant: “what’s a leopard?”
Jury: {laughter}.

My professor was a lawyer (has worked on both sides of the law) and says the funniest s**t in court is when someone attempts to represent themself. He said they never know what they're doing and usually blow it for themself. Plus counsel is a free right.

Edit: I am referring mainly to constitutional law.

I don't practice family law, but I occasionally cover simple family law hearings for my colleagues. One time I went to family law court I saw a guy who was arrested and brought in for failing to pay child support. Although he vehemently denied that he failed to pay child support, his defense was that he didn't pay because he didn't have the full amount to meet his payments. Basically instead of making partial payments he paid nothing and admitted it to the judge after denying that he failed to make payments. Like bruh.



Edit: I also once got a guy to admit during his deposition that he sued my client for breach of contract without actually verifying that my client breached said contract and he had no idea whether or not he suffered any damage. Needless to say I won that case.

Obligatory not a lawyer, but I took a class on constitutional rights where we had to read decisions from my country's supreme court.

There was this one where a woman was suing her employer, a company, because IT had found s*x pics of the woman on the company's computer. IT gave the tip to HR, who proceeded to contact the company's legal department. Anyhow, the woman was fired and she sued because she claimed that by showing the pics to the lawyer the company was going against her right to privacy. HR also threatened to release the pics to the other employees if the woman kept suing or something like that. In the end the court decided that HR had to return the pics to the woman, and that was it.

The funny thing was that the woman claimed that those pics weren't s*x pics, even though she was naked and in suggestive poses. She claimed that she had arrived tired from work, passed out on her bed, and her little daughter took those pics.

A blustering lawyer from a big firm thought he could intimidate me in to recommending a terrible settlement to my client by refusing any kind of negotiation. I called his bluff and we went to trial. I had never done a trial before. In this area of law (not criminal) I had never even SEEN how a trial was conducted. I won. That blustering lawyer was furious.

I was an expert engineer witness at a deposition 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 6 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 got to say now mfer.