Case Closed: 34 Lawyers Tell All About Their Most Shocking Legal Battles

I'm an attorney, but the case that stuck with me most was one I sat in on during undergrad. I was a criminal justice major and frequently had to go watch trials for class assignments. I was in the military at the time, so I had to cram these hours in randomly — if we had a light day, or I could take a long lunch, I would go to the closest courthouse and check what was available. One day, I went down to the federal courthouse in Baltimore and checked the list: one criminal case, nothing else going. I head upstairs and quietly walk in. Despite that, clearly, everyone checks me out, which is odd — usually, no one pays attention to the gallery. At the first break, a guy comes over and asks me who I am and why I’m there; he's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) with the Air Force, so I show him my ID and explain I have to watch criminal trials. He gives me a weird look but doesn’t push. As I’m sitting there, I slowly realize I SHOULD NOT BE HERE. An Air Force couple has a son, and gets divorced. She takes her son with her to her duty station in Japan and remarries a civilian employee there. Dad is deployed, then moves station, and keeps bugging her about when he can see the son; at some point, she just stops responding. A few months later, after Dad has filed a report with her command, requesting they make her communicate with him, Dad gets a call from an OSI agent who he knows, asking him for his son's full name and date of birth. Dad gives it to him, and the agent says, 'Look. I didn’t tell you this, but you need to call OSI on her base.' Mom had gone to the field, and her 8-year-old son had been bugging the stepdad while he was gaming. Stepdad got pissed off and beat the kid with the first thing to hand — a piece of banister from the stair he was working in. Mom came back from the field two days later and found the son unconscious, still on the floor. Because the stepdad's last home of record was in Maryland, he was tried in federal court in Baltimore. I sat through the ER doc who treated the son, who talked about seeing the internal crush injuries, and the coroner who talked about how hard you would have to hit an 8-year-old on the front to cause bruising on his back. I also sat through the dad talking about finding out his son was gone. After that day, I always went to misdemeanor court for my hours.

Not a lawyer, but I got a summer gig once sorting -/alphabetizing case files at a law firm and throwing out the files that were more than 7 years old. This necessitated going through them occasionally to find the closure dates.

The saddest one I picked up was a 17 year old boy who got sent to jail for having sex with a 14 year old girl.

Not that I think it’s okay for a 17 year old to have sex with a 14 year old; that’s realllly pushing it to put it mildly.

What made me sad was the way that the prosecutors procured a confession. It was one of those “if you write a nice apology letter to her parents, maybe we can make this all go away” manipulated written confessions. It was this heartfelt letter that was all
“I’m so sorry I put your family through this hardship, I wasn’t thinking, it was irresponsible, etc”. — and it just had this soulless sticky note on it that just said “CONFESSED” in all caps.

I read lots of interesting case files, but that one was a gut punch. The kid did some time for that one.

My sister is a criminal defense lawyer. She told me about a case where this guy had committed murder and after a week couldn't take the guilt and handed himself in.


Only when he got to the police station and confessed, they asked him where he killed this woman. He told them and they said it was out of their jurisdiction and to go to another police station to confess because it was closer to where the crime happened.


So he left and went the next day instead. Noone looked for him or asked or anything. It went completely unreported.
He did hand himself into the police station and they began to start proceedings for a case against him.
They wanted to include on the report the fact he had been turned away from the police station and still handed himself in to show some sort of character but the judge and police said they wouldn't allow it because it makes them look bad. They said they wouldn't let the jury even hear about it. My sisters team was frustrated and horrified.

This was in Ireland.

I'm an interpreter not an attorney, but I had a school case to interpret regarding bullying. The school decided to have a court case decision made in house. It was 12 kids and their parents on a stage in the cafeteria. The school officials were there and a school advocate who acted as judge. Apparently the seniors would trap the freshmen in a designated bathroom after lunch and jump them. Four seniors and eight freshman who were beat up individually, there were supposed to be nine but one was in the hospital. They showed surveillance of how the seniors picked the freshmen to beat up and there were 2 teachers aware of this, in one of the videos one of the teachers helped the seniors by pointing out who the freshmen were. This was a hazing technique that was going on in this school for years but this case was to make an example of those involved. The teachers involved were only mentioned when the bullys admitted receiving assistance in pointing out who to beat up, the teachers never got in trouble. Only one bully was expelled and all the freshmen were suspended. It was unjust and sad. This case went on for 3 days and each case lasted 3 to 5 hours after school.

IANAL but periphery of a divorce; anesthesiologist and his wife; dude has tons of money and a huge secondary stash of gold and other non currency assets that he doesn’t disclose; keeps lowballing wife and she keeps arguing for the proper financial disclosure - he laughs as she has to keep paying for her attorney to file to get access to the assets that he won’t disclose and they can’t prove -

He kept lowballing her and refusing to settle all while he continues to make huge money and she struggles - he dgaf - he wanted to win and make her suffer and drag it out

Divorce initiated because of his infidelity.

I was just an articling student at the time but we got a phone call that I still makes me laugh each time I think about it.

A woman calls in asking for advice on immigration law. I tell her I can't give advice but I can take details and book a meeting. She wants to know about claiming refugee status. I ask her where she is a refuge from. She then tells me that she doesn't want to claim refuge status, her sister does.

So I ask her where her sister is from, she tells me from Hong Kong. (This was almost a decade ago btw) So I ask her why she is fleeing Honk Kong. She tells me that her sister isn't fleeing Hong Kong, she is visiting on a 6 month visa.

So I ask why she want to help her sister get refuge status. She says she doesn't, she wants her sister to leave. Now, at this point I'm thoroughly confused. So I get her to elaborate.

Turns out, her sister is visiting and, to quote her, "She is ruining the family!" Her sister has threatened to stay on after her visa expires and this lady want to know whether she can actually do that. The short answer, no legal advice required is that she can't just stay, she has to go through immigration. So she asks what to do about her. I tell her, if she doesn't leave when her visa expires, call the cops. She says thanks and hangs up. I dissolve into fits of giggles.

Not a Lawyer but a law student. For my contractual law class is had to learn a verdict from The dutch supreme court which was pretty awfull. The situation was as follows:

A mom was cooking dinner, from where she was standing she could see her child playing outside. Suddenly a taxivan drives in the street and hits the child a quite a high speed. This sends the child of flying trough The air. When she hits the ground she has a lot of momentum so she slides over the street. The mother, obviously in shock, runs up to the child. When the mother grabs her child het hand vanishes in The back of the Head of the child. So the mother stands there with her hand in The scull/brain of the run over child.

This was the first time ever in dutch law that emiotional damages where accepted.

Not a lawyer, but we got sued and had to pay out money for absolutely no reason besides "cheaper to pay then off than actually defend yourself".

So let me give you the facts. We bought a property in 2014. It had tenants in it. Remember 2014, it is important.

So one of the tenants had an issue that made her unit partially uninhabitable in 2011. The property management takes a while to get it fixed, but they resolve the issue in 2011.

Fast forward to 2016. The tenant is now suing the previous owners AND US. We hadn't even heard of this property when it happened or even when the situation was resolved!

But we were added to the case. Eventually we had an arbiter talking between all 3 parties. The tenant was asking us for 20k but we brought it down to 10k. Our attornies recommended we settle, and so we did.

Now you're probably asking why we even paid. We bore no responsibility, right? You'd be right, but it would have cost us at least 10k to pay our attornies to defend us in court and even then there is no guarantee a jury would rule in our favor. It was best to pay her off and call it a day.

Her attorney on the other hand was one that worked off the proceeds of his case. He cost nothing unless he won...t~~hen he would take like 75% of whatever they won~~ apparently the attorney would take ~30% and the other fees would take another ~45% leaving the tenant with ~25%. Many people abuse the system with these tiny cases because it isn't even worth defending against.

On a final note, we also stipulated the tenant had to vacate the property within 5 months (we only did this because her pregnant adult daughter was about 7 months pregnant). Come the end of the 5 months, she asked if she could continue her tenancy.

Really, after you sue us for no reason but to earn a quick buck? Hell no.

And f**k the attorney who took her case.

I didn't work on it but I was in the courtroom at the time with other cases. Working with the DA during my first year in law school. Being presided by the biggest prick judge I've ever encountered in my life. It's not shocking like everyone else but I think it's pretty bad...

This couple broke up and the woman got a restraining order on this guy. Month or 2 later this guy goes out with his friends to some bar. Later in the night the ex girlfriend shows up at the same bar.

The guy goes up to her and says, "I know you have a restraining order against me, are you comfortable with me here or should I leave? I won't bother you either way." She says she doesn't want him around so he leaves right away.

Dude got put away 3 years for that. You aren't supposed to be within 100 feet or have any contact with the person who filed. So the fact this guy said that one sentence to her got him put away 3 years. Even though he was there first and trying to be courteous by asking and then leaving right away.

This was very beginning of my law career and already not a good sign lol. I hate being a lawyer so much. I learned coding if anyone's hiring.

I used to be an Employment Lawyer and I defended someone at a Tribunal who would pick on meeker women in the office and flirt with them and over time would give them shoulder rubs. More time would pass and eventually this guy’s hands would get lower and lower, until he was full on groping the girls breasts in the office.

Tough part was, he did it in such a sneaky way that all the other employees saw the shoulder rubs so suspected that they were an item so evidence didn’t fall in the poor girl’s favour. He won the case and told me afterwards “I can’t believe you got me off” - basically admitting it. I quit law after that. Lost the stomach for it.

I did an alleged arson case for an insurance company once. The insured had to provide a list of all items he had lost including over 1,000 book titles. Every book was the biography of a serial killer — we figured it was probably every book ever written about a serial killer. Insured gave off serious dark and mysterious vibes. Who knows the truth?

Not a lawyer but a paralegal! We had a client who claimed to be the daughter of a man, but his other daughter claimed that wasn’t true. The mans estate went to probate court and they both had rival petitions going to be the administrator…(which in California you get money for along with your share of the estate) She was a nut and my boss regretted taking her on everytime we had to deal with her and after her trying to exhume the body, breaking into his house to “gather evidence” and sending us on a wild goose chase to family members in Arkansas who would vouch for her, claiming the decedent always said our client was his daughter.…..Cut to month later, we get a call from our client: the police are outside her house, she’s barricaded in and has a gun to her husband. She won’t come out, she keeps calling our office to talk the her attorney (who is not in that day) and I’m talking to her tell her and watching the police on the news at the same time. She ended up stabbing her husband, not killing him but leaving him a vegetable and she went to jail. Never found out if she was the real daughter or not.

Client paid a multi-million dollar settlement with a hand-written personal check. He was pissed and refused to do a wire transfer like a normal person. I think the other side had to scramble to find a bank to deposit the check. Banking regulations limit how much money a bank can hold on deposit. You just can’t take a check that large to any local bank. The check eventually cleared, so I guess they figured it out. Good times…. That case will be on my resume for sure.

A mother sold the family farm out from under the son who was supposed to inherit it. Someone shot her (nonfatally). There were so many suspects that almost every lawyer in the county was assigned to defend one of them. Forensics eventually narrowed it down to two suspects, but each so adamantly pointed at the other as the shooter that it was going to be hard to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of either one's guilt. They both pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and served two years.

[Love Kills](https://dailybulldog.com/features/love-kills-tv-episode-based-on-2003-farmington-crime-story/)

Edited to add two more related links:

[https://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20030908/News/309089999](https://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20030908/News/309089999)

https://observer.com/2008/11/knee-deep/.