48 Bizarre Justifications People Apparently Thought Would Help Their Case

My grandpa is a lawyer. He once took a case from a woman who sued someone for calling her ugly.

I can't even begin to imagine what led her to believe she would win that one.

Being eligible for a refund because the private st***per a guy had ordered wasn't hot enough.

A woman was going to take a course to obtain career skills. Her instructor died, and she did not take the course. Then, she was hurt in a rollerblading accident and later tried to claim loss of income for the job she would have had, if she had taken the course, and successfully gotten the job.

Ooh, easy. I had a 17 million dollar deal that had been pending for months. Day it's supposed finance, someone finds a $0.04 cent discrepancy between two documents. Easy fix, right?

Apparently not. The billable hours that the attorneys justified emailing, calling, and ranting about those $0.04 are easily the dumbest thing I've seen anyone legally justify.

My friend's dad sued a dentist. The dentist took the stand and proudly said "I've been practising dentistry for 25 years."

My friend's dad couldn't resist, "Practising for 25 years, and you still can't do it right.".

In a New Zealand case for discrimination, a judge found that the law only allowing straight people to marry was not discriminatory to the lesbian couples who bought the case. Why? Because two people of the opposite s*x (i.e. two men) couldn't marry so it wasn't discriminatory on grounds of gender, and (this is my favourite bit) because two straight woman couldn't marry each other either it wasn't discriminatory on grounds of s*xuality.

Something tells me the judge may have had his own agenda...

A woman cold-called me and wanted to sue the Los Angeles Times for an article that ran 22 years ago. The article was about homeless people in Los Angeles. It did not name her, or show her picture, but she said people could tell that it was talking about her, and that it was harmful to her reputation.

During a work comp hearing for a former employee he said he was leaning back in his chair and hit his forehead on his desk.

Judge said "you know that is physically impossible".

Employee said, "no it isn't, look I have a bump right here.

We won.

Not me, not even a lawyer, but a friend of mine who was working at the public defender's office while in law school. He was tasked with coming up with *something* to give a client a good faith defense. The problem being that the accused was caught on video beating a corrections officer nearly to d***h and permanently blinding the C.O. in one eye. D**d to rights.

The D.A. decided to throw the book at the guy and charged the defendant with "Riot in a penal institution." After duly checking the chain of evidence (all in order) and making sure there wasn't even the barest hint that the defendant had reason to believe he was defending himself (there wasn't) buddy thought, "Well... it's just one guy? Is that *really* a riot?" But yes, one person can indeed be a riot.

But you see... a county jail, in the statute of that state, is not considered a penal institution. So the dumbest thing he's ever seen someone try to get away with in a courtroom was something he himself did. When the date of the trial came, he and the public defender stood up and demanded that the charges be dropped.

The D.A. and the very visibly crippled for life C.O. contained their incredulous outbursts of outrage and the judge asks why. "Your Honor... the jail is not a penal institution."

My friend says what followed was an hour-long "IN MY CHAMBERS! NOW!" session where both prosecution and defense were given a thorough a*s-reaming by the judge for the gross miscarriage of justice... but the charges were dropped.

A woman said she wasn't guilty of driving with a suspended license because witchcraft made her drive. She also said she didn't need a public defender because God was her lawyer.

Guy in prison filed suit against the Sheriff's Department for violation of the 1983 Civil Rights Act because the prison served him warm kool-aid.

A friend's uncle had his house broken into, and he ended up beating up the intruder. Later in court they asked him if he felt in danger, to which he replied "nah, I knew I could take him".

He was eventually convinced to reply "yes, I felt my life threatened" so he wouldn't get in trouble.

I thought of one more. I don't know if it actually got to court.

Guy doesn't want to drill a hole in his nice car to affix his front license plate, and he doesn't want to put it in the "approved" location in the windshield. Instead, he rubber-banded it to the passenger's sun visor.

He got pulled over, told the cop he had never heard of that requirement, and got a warning to put the plate in an approved place.

Three months later, he got pulled over, told the cop he had never heard of that requirement, the cop ran his record and found the warning, and wrote him a ticket.

He asked me if I knew a lawyer who would "guarantee that he could get [him] off.".

I once worked on a case where the mother kicked one of the kids out of her house, but still wouldn't consent to my client (the father) having custody.

(This same case also involved my go-to story for these threads, where the other lawyer took a cell phone call right while he was in the middle of making his closing argument to the judge.).

I was in a courtroom waiting for my case to be called, but had to wait for a small claims trial to wrap up. A guy sued a restaurant because the restaurant charged him $7 for a sandwich that was $5 during early bird special hours. The guy stated he ordered the sandwich at noon, but the early bird prices were from 4-6 p.m. The judge asked why he thought he should get the sandwich for $5 when it wasn't during early bird hours. The guy said it was earlier than early bird, so they should honor that price. What a great freaking use of judicial time and resources.

I was in a court room watching a public defender defend her client.

The dude was in jail for other crimes, but was in court that day for trespassing. The poor public defender had to try and defend this guy, as he had pleaded not guilty.

Her argument was that the arresting officer had no idea whether or not the man was literate, therefor he shouldn't have arrested the man as it was possible the man couldn't read the trespassing signs.

The woman who claimed that the injury my client caused made it impossible for her to fulfill her dream of going to medical school and becoming a physician, thus causing her tremendous loss of income. She decided on going to medical school because her middle initials were M.D. Of course, since she dropped out of high school in the 9th grade, after failing all her classes, she had to get her GED before attending college and before applying to medical school.

I was observing a court case while an intern and I witnessed a public defense attorney whip out stuffed animals and make a baffling, nonsensical defense of her client while playing with them. I couldn't follow w*f she was saying, but at one point she had a pink elephant chasing the aqua bear....it was ridiculous.

I did an internship thingy (I thinnk thats the word, not sure) at a court when in school, and some 17 year old girl st**bed and sl*shed her boyfriend 13 f*****g times (he survived, I don't know how, especially not after I've seen the pictures of the injuries) because he didn't want to go buy cigarettes. She used this as a legit argument, and kept saying things like "If he doesnt do what I want I should be allowed to punish him for it".

IANALY, but someone did try to justify speeding (80 in a 40) because it was pouring rain and he wanted to outrun the storm.