45 Times People Did Shady And Unethical Things To Try To Win A Case

I started out working for a commercial law firm advising companies on environmental compliance. We had a client who was a large oil and gas distributor which owned a contaminated site in a populated area.

My boss advised the client to transfer ownership of the site to a newly incorporated limited liability company with no assets. That way, when the government ordered the site to be remediated, the client wouldn't be liable for the clean-up.

I left not too long after that.

EDIT: I'm not based in the United States - yes, lawyers exist in other countries too.

Obligatory "not a lawyer", but my parents got caught up in a slimy lawyer's talons.

Basically, they had carpet installed in their house in 2005, paid in cash, got a receipt, and went on with their lives.

7 years later, they get a letter from some law firm saying the company they'd had install their carpet never received payment and would press charges if they didn't pay up. My dad, being a paranoid person, had kept the receipt and said he'd see them in court. He did some research, found out what the attorney can and can't do in this situation, and also found out that the attorney had been working with the flooring company for years, accusing paying customers of not paying and collecting excess money from them under threat of lawsuit.

Fast-forward to the court date. Dad shows up knowing his rights, with the receipt stating exactly how much he paid and when. Attorney has nothing except a copy of the invoice for my dad's payment that he leaves in his folder the whole time. Not only does the attorney break almost every rule of court possible, he completely slanders my dad. Calling him "sketchy looking" and "dishonest" even though the receipt is literally right there in front of him, insists that the receipt is fake despite having a copy of the invoice.

My dad lost that case. Before anyone had even left the courtroom, the attorney walked up to chat with the judge, who asked if they were still on for brunch tomorrow. Because it was a super small circuit, this dude had been able to buddy up to a judge to the extent he was allowed to do basically whatever he wanted and still win his cases.

A year later my parents sued the attorney for misconduct and requested an out-of-circuit judge, who essentially told that slimy schmuck to sit down and shut up when he tried to pull something against the rules. They won that case.

When I was working as a public defender in the Detroit state court I ROUTINELY saw cops lie about the existence of video recordings of an event. The law says they have to have the cams running when they make a stop, but in all the cases I saw not a single cop was ever able to produce a video. Either the video had “malfunctioned,” been “accidentally deleted” after the event, or the camera was “broken.”

It was a weird place to work. The cops very much viewed the defense lawyers and the legal process as their enemy. I’m sure there were a lot of unjust outcomes as a result.

Criminal defendants charged with stealing an item must be charged with stealing an item FROM someone. That someone must be a legal entity.

I once represented a guy who was charged with stealing dog food. He was homeless and trying to feed his dog. Needless to say, I was sympathetic, so I was willing to pull something of a dirty trick for him.

I queued him up for trial. As soon as the first witness was sworn in, I moved to dismiss. The entity he was charged with stealing from? “Wal Mart.” That is not a legal entity. I think the real name was Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. or something.

Case immediately dismissed. Since a witness had been sworn in, double jeopardy prevented them from trying him again.

Mom had her 7 year old daughter lie on the stand. Mother claimed bodily injuries from a motor vehicle accident. She forced her 7 year old daughter to testify at trial. The mother coached the daughter to say that the mother was in the car at the time of the accident. It became very apparent that the mother was not in the car at the time of the accident because the mother couldn’t recall where the accident occurred or which parts of the vehicles were damaged.

I got the physical evidence thrown out because the officer reached into my client's pocket before patting the outside first. Because that the was the only evidence that my client committed a crime, the prosecutor was forced to dismiss the entire case.

I knew of a criminal defense attorney that had a slight foreign accent. When he had a lost cause of a case, in court he would sometimes play up the accent heavily, pretend to understand less English than he really did, generally play dumb, etc. This was juxtaposed with one of the best prosecutor offices in the country who were all very polished. His hope was the jury might feel sorry for his client and acquit him even if they thought he was guilty because it felt like he never had a fair shot. 

It was a fine line to walk to do that and not piss off the judge though lol.

From LegalEagle, more a grievous malpractice:

Some lawyers tried to use ChatGPT to write their brief.

The language model hallucinated and invented court cases and references. They filed it anyway.

Opposing party candidly asked the judge:
"We don’t seem to be able to find the mentioned cases in any of the legal databases. Could they please provide sources?"

Judge frowned.

Lawyers sweated, tried to play dumb and asked for time while they used again ChatGPT to write the fake cases.

Judge was not amused.

They got only fined and humiliated.

I went to court and watched my lawyer boldly lie... He asked me something before going in that I confirmed and stated the exact opposite to the judges face. When we were leaving a couple other lawyers complimented him on his speech. Most of them lie and everyone knows it... Whoever is the better lier often wins and it is acceptable which is a bit of a loophole if you ask me.

I recently overheard the lawyer I work for tell someone to try to get her husband to hit her again in order for her to file a TRO against him, and make their case stronger. I was speechless.

For a year I worked for the most unethical attorney I have ever met. Here are my top two stories:

He took on a client that was injured at work. Since the attorney normally does defense work, the doctor came back saying the injury was clearly not work related. The attorney called the doctor to inform him that he represented the employee and not the employer in this case. The doctor then wrote a report that the injury was clearly work related.

One afternoon the attorney's assistant ran into my room and said I need to go the courthouse right now to defend the attorney in a traffic case. Attorney told me he had no run-ins with law enforcement before, had never been ticketed before, and would just like to get supervision. I go in front of the judge and present this information and I get him supervision. I go back to the office and curiosity got the best of me. I searched his criminal record. Yeah, turns out he had another outstanding speeding ticket and you could see his mugshot for domestic violence.

Oh, and he tried to fine me $5,000 for going to a doctor's appointment on my lunch break. Yup at that point I literally walked out.

A friend of a friend woke up in a hospital. He has no idea what happened but he was brought out of an induced coma from a bike wreck. The car he ended up under was owned by a lawyer. The lawyer and a cop forced the doctors to get the guy out of a coma long enough to sign a statement when no family was present. The lawyer never mentioned to the doctor that it was he who was driving and not a person he represented. The lawyer then went on the sue for damages on his car by the guy and his bicycle.

The prosecution (state) asked for a continuance (more time to prepare their case) and the judge denied it. So they just dropped all charges and then refiled them the next day to get around the judge’s decision. Nothing anybody could do about it.

I racked up parking tickets in law school, only to find out that the district had changed but the signs were never removed. The street behind the school was in a different district-one with no time limit on parking. The neighbors didn’t want students parking for hours on end so they treated it as de facto timed parking.

I defeated the tickets but only after the contentious hearing where the hearing office asked me why I thought it was ok to park wherever I wanted despite the signs. I said the signs don’t matter if they’re not legal and he said enforcement (meter maids) go by the signs, not the map. I asked if I could just put up signs wherever I wanted to not have people park and they would enforce it? He didn’t have answer for that one…

It really bothered me that the school made a big deal about getting a dispensation on parking time during exams, because the exams were an hour longer than you could park.

My psychologist told me about the time He and one of the most "powerful " lawyers in town were in court.

The opposing lawyer was even more of a jerk than this guy. He had to find a crack in his armor. So upon the opposing lawyer opening his briefcase, lawyer #1 notices it was full of shoe shine stuff. The guy is obsessed with his shoes.

Before the trial, lawyer #1 greets the opposing lawyer, and while shaking hands,he "accidentally " stepped on his foot.

Shrink said he never had to try so hard not to erupt in laughter in court.

Opposing lawyer was so flustered because the trial had started,and he couldn't shine his shoes, that he lost the case.

Lawyer #1's son is my current attorney.

IANAL

But a man who was a customer for the construction company I worked for at the time was a real piece of work.
What hurricane sandy hit, I tree fell over and hit into his sons room and made a hole in the ceiling. He then decided for the family to take a vacation after the storm and to let the hole and tree be...for a bit more than a month. This way there was massive amounts of water damage and the houses got to be labeled as unlivable.

He did this so that not only could he collect massive amounts of money from the insurance and from the government, but to also turn around and sue them for much more money. He got all that money. He had his old house torn down and hired my company to build his brand new state of the art mansion that he planned.

What the company didn't know is that this guy was a serial lawsuit filer. He sues everyone all the time. He had a decent paying job but he makes the bulk of his money more from lawsuits it seems. He sued the bank once for a misfiling and somehow got tons of money from that. He then turned around and sued the lawyer he had for that bank case for not getting him as much money as he wanted. He won that one too somehow.

the project ended up being a nightmare, he had two people who were not licensed architects writing up his blueprints and getting them stamped by a sloppy licensed architect that didn't review the blue prints (prob so he could sue later. and when I say sloppy, the head of my company had to point out how the roof was sticking into the body of the garage and how the steps didn't match up and make it to the different floors, ect. and then give it back to the customer to have them redo it all (multiple times)). Customer also would not contact the plumber in time to do the work on the days needed to there were many wasted days, customer would not pay any of the bills on time when they were due, and we then found out later that they were taking doctored pictures the whole time of the property when company was not one the scene at the time and calling the town for trash complaints (complaining about wood, pipes, metal, and other materials sitting in back of property and on sides, not real trash) on his own plot of land during construction so that he could sue us later on.

As the job was starting to finish up, it was about 6 months behind schedule due to all these problems and more that were outside of our control. The head of the company I was with was going to a European country for a wedding of their nephew and that was prefaced and known before the project was accepted. When they left for said wedding, customer tried to directly contract one of the subcontractors to take over and do the whole project (illegal and written as forbidden to even talk prices of anything in contract with subcontractor), and put into motion the whole bologna lawsuit against our company.

Unfortunately the company I was with came back to pure hell and arguments and then pulled out of the project and planned to sue the customer when he refused to pay his next installment and the installment that had been overdue by a month. Left the house in a terrible limbo for a while since no one else could work with the licensed new material my company was using on his home. On top of that, the lawyer that our company hired to sue the customer went AWOL and they had to find a new lawyer that did nothing for months. So instead they got paper work in the mail telling them that the customer was suing them for breaking contract (not true and the other way around). This lead to the new business partner screwing over the Head of the company and stealing money from the joint accounts as they ran away. Ultimately leading to the head of the construction company closing down their business/HOC's life work, from all the lost money.
They never got to counter sue to customer and the customer had to drop the case because they really didn't have anything. In the end though, they got to have half of their new mansion built for 1/16 of the price before getting someone new to finish it up and they screwed an honest company out of business.

TLDR: Fraudulent customer is a serial lawsuiter and forces head of company to lose nearly everything.

I got in a no injury car accident, gave the cops my insurance which had both my name and my dad's name. I'm a male with a name that is normally a females name. Cop wrote the ticket to my dad because he assumed who I was by names on the insurance. When I went to court to pay the fine, the judge told me I couldn't represent my dad. When I explained that he was living very far away from the accident and I was the driver, the judge said well you have no ticket, and your dad obviously wasn't the driver, so case dismissed.

Heard of at least one case where the defendant was charged with carrying a loaded firearm without a license, but the count had to be dismissed because it turns out the idiot had loaded it with the wrong caliber bullet. The police lab tried repeatedly to get the gun to fire in the range using the defendant's bullets, but even they couldn't make it work. So technically the firearm didn't count as "loaded" under the statute. It wasn't quite case dismissed, because there was a lesser charge that still applied to an unloaded firearm, but it was a much less severe charge.

Not sure if that's a "loophole," but it's one of the funnier and more harmless get-out-of-jail-free cards I've seen.

Convicted criminal was on furlough. A program with the jail where you can be released on an ankle monitor while still serving your sentence. He cut the monitor, ran and was caught. Indicted for Escape.

 Case gets to trial and the prosecutor puts on a pretty straightforward case. people from the jail and ankle monitor company and arresting cops testify. Then the defense moves to dismiss. Prosecution has failed to prove escape. 

There was actually a different law called unlawful evasion that applied to escaping off furlough program. this was extra confusing because escape is the correct charge for cutting an ankle monitor if you are serving your sentence on ankle monitor. Which you can do sometimes. But if you start in jail and get out on an ankle monitor as part of a furlough program then the crime is unlawful evasion. 

Prosecutor was furious. Because the defense could have dismissed the case at any point. Arraignment up to trial. But he never said anything. So the guy sat in jail for months awaiting trial on a charge he could get dismissed. Judge ordered the case dismissed. 

There was some small debate about whether he could be retried or not, because did double jeopardy attach if he was never actually charged with the right crime? But the DA wasn’t going to highlight the embarrassment and just let it go. A crime (and slam dunk case) with a 6+ year sentence dismissed for a few months in jail.

Not me, but a professor I had, who specialized on advocacy for victims of human trafficking (basically, helping victims of trafficking avoid deportation).

A salon was raided in connection to a suspected human trafficking ring. The tip turned out to be good, multiple people were arrested, and several victims were taken into custody.

Among them was a 4 year old boy. None of the victims knew him, "he helped clean the salon." Traffickers wouldn't fess up as to where he came from. The kid didn't know his own name, where he was from, where his parents were, or where they were. When the judge asked the kid for his name, he replied "Spiderman!" When they asked for his real name, he told them "Peter Parker!" Yeah, you get the idea.... anyway, prosecution wanted him gone because he was in the US illegally. Not sure where prosecution thought he'd get sent, but whatever.

Now here's a neat thing.... there's a federal statute on refugee eligibility. This particular statute hadn't been cited in over 60 years, but for all intents and purposes was still good law. The statute on question basically says, "if a victim of human trafficking is an unaccompanied minor is under X age and does not know their country of origin, they are to be granted asylum immediately, no court discretion." Now I have to emphasize, this law hadn't been used in literal DECADES, and was effectively forgotten by courts and legislature as a past relic that somehow slipped through immigration reforms over the years. But it was still valid.

My professor intended to cite this statute. The prosecutor was terrified of creating new case law, and offered to drop charges if this statute wouldn't get brought up. Professor agreed, bc client's interests.

In a strange twist of fate, the prosecutor passed away, and the newly assigned prosecutor said he would not honor any preexisting deals. Prof is like, "fine, let's make some case law!" New prosecutor panics and asks to go back to the original deal, which is accepted.