38 Times Lawyers Witnessed A Moment When Someone Messed Up So Bad, It Was Impossible To Save Them

Not a lawyer, recent law school grad studying for the bar. This happened summer after my first year of law school, I was making a court appearance as a student attorney (basically, a rule in my state that lets students practice under attorney supervision).

I was working with the public defender’s office, representing a client at a first appearance on a probation violation/bail hearing. On a probation violation, the judge is allowed to hold a defendant without bail (keep them in jail until the case is over).

Client says he has some money, but not much. Could get together about $500 for bail. Ok, I’ll ask the judge to keep it low or just release him. Prosecutor asks for $300 bail. Great, my work here is done. Whatever I say, judge will order $300 or less and my guy is out.

I say my piece, and then my client interrupts the judge, saying some incoherent stuff about how he needs to get out and he’s got this that and the other thing going on. Won’t let the judge speak.

Judge holds him without bail even though the prosecutor didn’t ask for it. All he had to do was shut up and he’d have gone home that afternoon.

I once had an idiot client who put out a public statement announcing that a subordinate had resigned.

Then the subordinate announced that he had not resigned, and furthermore, had no intention of resigning.

Then my idiot client put out an email announcing that he had fired the subordinate.

Then I had to advise my idiot client that he didn't have the right to fire the subordinate.

Then I had to explain to my idiot client that he couldn't fire the man because he is not my idiot client's subordinate at all; in fact, he was hired by, and worked for, a completely different subsidiary - over which my client had no authority.

So I got my idiot client to put out a public statement saying that his boss, the Chief Executive, had fired the subordinate.

Then my idiot client's boss blabbed to everybody that he had not fired the subordinate, and that he had thrown the whole matter back into my idiot client's hands.

And now, dammit, I have to spend the next four months boning up on all the statues and case law pertaining to obstruction of justice.

Sincerely, William Barr's lawyer.

Probably not exactly what you're looking for but once had a Sovereign Citizen (if you don't know what those are, consider yourself lucky) in for not paying his child support and was beyond difficult to work with in any capacity. I'm talking who ever he spoke to from my office, he would demand their phone number, current address, and social security number because he thought he was entitled to it since we're government employees. He also was just not a fun guy to talk to and was just straight up rude to everyone.

So these types of things rarely go to trial and usually people don't even serve any jail time as long as they work with us, but not this guy. He was uncooperative the whole pre-trial process and refused to show up to anything unless there was a threat of warrant. Gets to the day of trial and he starts giving the Judge [a hard time]over every little thing, demanding her SS#, address, and phone#, and claiming some weird straw man argument (not the actual fallacy but something to do with a legal identity, you're guess is as good as mine), he cited unrelated contract and business laws (again this is child support), but what finally did it was he called the Judge a "stick up the..." and was promptly found guilty and sentenced to the max time (180 days). I literally did nothing but read his payment history, cited how much he was behind and sat back to watch this guy argue himself into serving 6 months. It was pretty satisfying seeing him escorted out of the court room in handcuffs.

Not a lawyer, but a few years back some guy sued a college he was an employee at for wrongful termination and claiming discrimination (since he was handicapped). They reached an out-of-court settlement with the guy (like $80k) on the condition that the case was not made public.

That was until the guy's stupid teenage daughter bragged about it all over social media with "My daddy won $80k from "college name" in a lawsuit, so guess who's spending the summer in Europe !!" and "College-name" can suck-it !".

So guess who lost their case and didn't get [anything], and guess who didn't "spend the summer in Europe" that year ?

Not me but my solicitor during a mediation. Not going into the details but long story short, an old boss owed me a lot of money. His wife spoke for him and in the last few minutes of back and forth she uttered. "We would have found some other way not to pay her." Everyone in the room had to keep composed until they hung up. It was a satisfying win.

My Father in Law does forensic engineering, and works a lot of insurance cases. Many of the claims our area are people falsely claiming hail damage. One case, a lady had been told if you beat your car with a marble in a sock, you can fake hail damage. She took a BAG of marbles in a sock and beat the [hell] out the car. Needless to say, she lost her case.

My father as a young lawyer was trying to get a case to take place in one state and not another because the insurance laws were more favorable in state A. The company he was in litigation with wanted it in state B for that reason, and claimed they only distributed in state A but had no locations in it and should not have to go to court in state A.

Well this company was a soda company and my dad has a major diet soda [dependency], he goes through at least a 12 pack a day. So they were in a meeting with the soda company lawyers and took a break and he went downstairs to get a diet soda. When it came out he noticed on the can that it said "Distrubted by the XYZ soda company of State A". So he got another diet soda and brought that one up stairs to the meeting. The XYZ soda co decided to settle after that.

This was in the late 70s or early 80s I believe.

Obligatory IANAL, but this fits the bill pretty well.

During the Menendez brothers trial, when Erik was testifying that he and his brother went to the Big 5 to purchase handguns in August of 1989. According to Erik, when told that there would be a 15 day waiting period on them, they chose to purchase shotguns instead. Erik even mentioned the case and shelf where the handguns had been sitting.

The attorney then paused and said "Mr. Menendez, did you know that Big 5 stopped carrying handguns in March of 1986?"

Thank you to /r/missmattyyo for linking the article that explains why this was such a big deal. It basically undermined the credibility of the Menendez brothers' testimony since they were caught lying under oath about the guns, which also made people believe that the accusations against their father were also lies. The initial trial was deadlocked, however the second trial saw them both convicted.

Not a lawyer but...

I was listening to the Casefile podcast. Guy gets obsessed with his former teacher. Kidnaps her and her daughter and holds them for 52 days. They escape. At the trial while she is testifying he slashes her with a knife.

He was convicted...

I was trying a case where my client was charged with being a felon in possesson of a firearm. Prosecutor has to prove a) he had a gun and b) he is a felon. A) is not in dispute. The way to prove b) is to bring into evidence a certified conviction and sentencing order.

This guy had been convicted of several felonies in another state and one in my state. The prosecutor was having some issues with getting a certified out of state order and just relied on the single in state order which was provided to me in discovery. My client pointed out to me that neither the DOB or SSN on the order was his.

At trial, when the prosecutor tried to introduce the conviction order, I objected on relevance. The name was the same but DOB and SSN was different than what was on the indictment. The judge agreed and refused to let it into evidence. Not guilty.

In one where I was a jury member, almost all the evidence was on camera. One lawyer was trying to make his case on the fact a mandated sweeping security check wasn’t done on time and if it had it would have potentially prevented what happened to his client. After him drilling in this point endlessly, the opposing counsel asked to see footage of around the time of the missed sweeping check.

The video showed a specific visit to the client. A personal visit is far better than a sweeping check. First lawyer was not such a smug guy anymore.

I was sitting in court waiting for my case and there is a basic traffic stop case going on. The prosecutor has the arresting officer walk through the incident. The Cop recalls all these details about how he pulled the driver over for running a red light, then noticed a busted tail light. How he stayed cool, calm, and collected, even as the driver became irate, cursing at the cop and telling the cop he can "shove the ticket where the sun don't shine." The cop then claimed that the driver ripped up the ticket, rolled up the bits, and threw it at the officer. The cop sells the story and you notice most of the court room has become invested.

The driver is not a lawyer, but chooses to represent himself and takes all of a minute to embarrass the officer and court with a simple. "Your honor, the officer testified, under oath, to the court that I acted illegally and belligerently, then aggressively tore up and threw away the ticket, which I find hard to believe seeing as this here is the ticket, in one piece, without even a crease on it." He pulls out the ticket from a folder he had in front of him. You could hear many in the court gasp, laugh, mumble.

The judge stops the driver, looks over to the prosecutor, addresses him "Mr. Smith, thoughts?" Without hesitation, the prosecutor replies "Yes your honor, in deference to the courts time, we would like to go ahead and drop the case." All the other defendants pending their case applaud. The judge bangs his gavel, calls order in the court room, admonishes the room, and then admonishes the officer and prosecutor before closing it out.

When the defendant stuck to his “two beers” story and the expert blood alcohol witness said his BAC for his height/weight would’ve been 7.8 drinks.

I am not a lawyer, but defended myself in court for tailgating. The judge asked “who wants to go first?” So I said “your honor, I would like the officer to go first.” The officer simply read the ticket. Afterwards I asked “Officer, what is the law for tailgating?” And he said “1 car link, per 10mph.” So I simply said “how fast was I going and how many car links was I?” And he said “I don’t remember.” I knew at that moment I had the case in the bag, but I took it a step further. I said “your honor, this officer has misrepresented the law in your court room.” And I could tell they were both SUPER PISSED at me and the judge says “Explain.” At the time I had spent hours looking for the law and I memorized the title and number and I said “Your honor, the law says “A motorist must follow another motorist at a reasonable and prudent distance.” The judge, infuriated, tipped his reading glasses down to the end of his nose and stares at me as if he is going to send me straight to the electric chair, then he suddenly ripshis neck around to the police officer and he says “Don’t you ever let this happen again in my court room!” And he turned back to me and said “Mr. Vegano, you are dismissed, there will be no court costs.” I turned around and faced the court room, buckled 1 knee and pumped my fist back and said “Yesss” totally Napoleon Dynamite style. Best day ever!

The client who said they didn't speak English so we had to get an interpreter. When asked questions the client kept answering in English and the interpreter would have to stop and ask again and then answer in the language. Long confusing deposition to say the least. The client spoke better English than anything.

Not that phrase. On two different occasions in the last three years, I have declined representation, and in each case it was someone who had been sued, was served with the papers, had completely ignored them, was defaulted, received and ignored the request that the court enter a judgment based on the default, and then ignored subpoenas and other directives relating to creditor's exams. Then it finally occurs to them that they should consult with a lawyer - far too late to do anything.

My question, not spoken out loud: "How in the world do you get through life?"

Oftentimes during discovery you’ll get Requests for admission, which are a set of yes or no questions designed to get basic, noncontested info like whether our client was the one driving the car at the time. Often plaintiffs lawyers will throw in a gotcha question that pretty much states “admit the whole thing is your fault and you owe plaintiffs a bunch of money.”

99.9% of the time we’ll deny them because it would sink our whole case, but I had one idiot defendant who insisted on admitting that one. We lost.

All I can think of is I saw this guy on the TV (Dutch) who was accused of possession of fire arms, he didn't have an attorney as he didn't want one. His reason: he didn't need an attorney because what he was doing was actually legal.

The judge asked him if he was sure. He said he was. Then he was convicted. That was pretty much it.