Lawyers Are Sharing Their Juiciest "Can You Believe It?!" Stories From The Courtroom, And They're As Surprising As You'd Expect
There's no shortage of courtroom dramas to marathon watch this holiday season. However, these films rarely capture the actual absurdity that lawyers witness in their day-to-day.
Sure, the job can be mundane at times. Attorneys skim through piles of paperwork and evidence to help their clients. However, there are also instances where attorneys take on some of the most baffling cases.
In some cases, it's bleak. Lawyers have to represent those accused of repulsive crimes. In other instances, it's just wildly ridiculous. Sometimes, it's a bit of both.
After going down a rabbit hole of Reddit threads, I found some baffling stories from attorneys who shared their experiences on the job that left me both stunned and in laughter. Some surround their day-to-day in the office while others detail cases they took on.
Note: the responses were compiled from various Reddit threads that you could find here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
1."I just worked on an amazing case recently. A woman and her f*ck buddy decided to try anal in some crazy sex position where he was apparently holding her arms behind her back. He falls on top of her and hurts her shoulder, she gets a rotor cuff tear. She sued him and I represent his insurance company so we stepped in. TIL homeowners insurance will cover accidents from anal. I wonder if you have to request that coverage specifically."
2."Client was part of a group of active paedophiles. One of the others killed the boy while several were involved with physically abusing him. Our guy’s defense was that he was just a voyeur, so although he was there, he was not involved in the actual murder. He was on bail the whole time, including the trial, up to when he decided to change his story and say instead that he hadn’t been there. His sister gave evidence that he’d come home that night covered in blood. He got a long, long time."
3."I’m in a Zoom mediation. The mediator gave a long speech, saying that no one else was supposed to be on the call other than the parties. My client is sitting in the passenger seat of his car. I knew his GF was in the car, on the driver's side, and I texted him and told him she couldn’t be there. He sends me a text that she’s not there. A good 90 minutes into the mediation his car starts driving on the freeway. The mediator tells him he can’t be driving [while] on the phone and to pull over. Mind you, he’s still in the passenger seat."
"Finally opposing counsel says, 'Is he in England or in the passenger seat?' The mediator asked my client if he was driving or [if] someone else [was]. He tells her he [is] driving and he’s in the driver's seat. The mediator tells him to move the camera to his left.
The client proceeds to throw the phone on the ground. You hear nothing but people moving around and he says, 'Get down in the back.' He then picks up the phone and is clearly now in another seat, the driver's seat and he proves he’s in the driver's seat.Needless to say, mediation was canceled and he got charged attorney fees. In the same mediation, he thought he was in a breakout room with just me and called the mediator a 'fucking b***h.'"
4."It was a credit card fraud case in the early part of my career. He actually wore the stolen clothes to court and a clerk at the defrauded store identified them in front of the jury. I felt like the guy in the commercial that asks 'want to be somewhere else?'"
5."Law student working at law firm. We have a fax machine that gets tons of spam faxes."
"Our chief partner has a vendetta against spam, and he uses it to give us practice in researching and writing petitions. So we catalog each fax, send replies to take us off the list, document everything, and wait for them to fax us again. Then we follow up with a FCC complaint and demand letter. A couple of times, this has ended up with the person getting mad and sending us retaliatory faxes (black sheets of paper).If they stop sending we don’t do anything, but we’ve gone to small claims a couple of times, and gotten $500 per page a couple of times.We also got someone trying to sell drugs through fax, but we just turned that over to the police."
6."Client charged with DUI. Forced by police to give a urine sample on the side of a very busy interstate highway. Any sympathy the jury may have had for the defendant was lost, however, when he fell asleep during the playing of the video of the traffic stop. He had been out all night partying the night before trial. He was found guilty. Then, he lied to the judge about what would be in his system during a drug test, and his sentence was doubled."
7."Commit robbery in order to hire an expensive attorney with minimal experience in criminal law rather than accept a seasoned public defender."
8."Family Law (child custody and visitation): Mother was married to Father, and they had three children. Father died. Mother married Father's cousin. The new husband did not get along well with his teenage step-son."
"Here is the kicker. Mother, playing peace-maker, told new husband '[Teenage stepson] is your cousin, and now he is your son, so y'all need to learn to get along.' TL;DR — I am from the South."
9."The client called me to the hospital to write his will. (He called me himself – he knew he was terminal, but nobody got anything over on this guy. He was completely cognizant of absolutely everything until the very end)."
"He left token amounts to the older sons and the bulk of his modest but comfortable estate to the youngest. The youngest son, of course, was positively gleeful to learn he was getting what he thought to be a lot of money, but at the same time was confused as to why Dad would leave things that way since he was actually closer to the older sons. The older sons, who had always been respectful of Dad and responsible, were hurt and confused, especially since they knew how angry their Dad had been at the youngest. They asked what they could do to make the division of things more fair.I recommended initially that they make a Family Settlement that could be presented to the probate court for approval. Dad's instructions to me and to the cousin he had named administrator were that if any of the older sons challenged his will, paternity tests were to be done on them. He did not believe that any of the sons but the youngest were actually his. I would lay money on the oldest being his just because they looked so much alike. The other three, though? I didn't think they had a prayer. The youngest was not subject to the paternity test.The whole family was devastated at the paternity test condition. The two sons who owned the garage sat in my conference room and cried. They had no idea. The eldest was angry but didn't hesitate. He knew that whatever his father's suspicions were, he was actually his natural son. The fourth son was rocked. He had a heart attack that night (but survived, fortunately.) The youngest was stunned, too. It never dawned on him that his older brothers might not actually be his brothers.I was very grateful when they decided to enter into a Family Settlement and divide the estate more equitably."
10."A year out of law school, I once had a potential client who wanted me to sue Canada. Apparently, he could not get into the country due to his felony record. I tried to reason with him that it was up to the sovereign nation to set its own rules regarding entry to the country, but he insisted that we could make a lot of money suing Canada. I didn't take the case but I told him I might be able to get him a letter that said 'sorry' from Canada."
11."I had a case where a guy was charged for running a red light. The thing is, he had been sitting at the lights for five minutes, and it hadn’t changed. The wording of the specific section under which he was charged related to stop signs and traffic lights and referred to them as 'traffic regulation devices.' I successfully argued that as the traffic light wasn’t changing, it wasn’t regulating traffic, and he got off. I couldn’t believe it when the judge ruled in my favour, neither could the police prosecutor!"
12."Bathroom tiles fell on top of our intern's head while she was using the toilet."
"[The] old building we were using temporarily, the tiles were moving downwards for a while. Apparently, the landlord was dragging his feet, and because that area was only used by junior lawyers and interns, no one really pushed.We just had lunch, she went in, and 30 seconds later, we heard her going, "OW OW OW HELP." She unlocked the door, I opened it and she was sitting there, leaning forward to cover herself as much as possible, holding the rest of the tiles with her hands and some of them on the floor. Luckily, it was just me there.With the door open, she had enough space to safely get out without anything else falling on her.I felt so so bad for her. She had a great sense of humor and was able to laugh about it later on. Suddenly, it was a priority to make the landlord fix it."
13."I tried a sexual harassment case in a conservative county. Young female victim, gross old male perpetrator. We had really good evidence, including admissions. The jury voted defense. After the verdict, my client and I were sitting out in front of the courthouse. She was crying. The jury foreman, who had just voted for the defense, came up to me and said, 'If that son of a bitch had done that to my daughter, I would’ve gone down to that store and kicked his ass.'”
14."Criminal prosecutor here. A patrol officer pulled over a driver for some traffic violation, I think failure to signal. After a heated roadside exchange where the driver initially refused to turn over her license, she ultimately relented and 'thrust the license with undue force' into the officer's outstretched hand. The cop charged her with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer."
"When asked to justify his actions, he stated that 'people need to learn to respect the police.' We dismissed the charge, apologized to the defendant, and told the cop to never bring us something like that again. I can't recall if internal affairs was notified.
I work with the police every day, and the majority of them are good people. This guy was a sh*t."
15."Client added nine years to a short sentence. He got like a year or two for being involved in a drag race [where] the other guy crashed and severely injured someone else. Then, towards the end of his short prison term, he tried to escape, [and] got nine more years for prison escape! He became friends with John Lennon's killer in NY prison, which was interesting."
16."I was defending a client who was accused of trademark infringement. [He] thought he knew better than the IP Attorney assigned to his case (me), and so went on his company's website to 'defend' himself by basically confessing to what he did and claiming it wasn't against the law and the trademark owner was a 'woke baby' who needed to either 'learn the law' or 'get back in the kitchen and make her husband a sandwich' (I wish I could say I was joking)."
"I was one email away from negotiating a settlement that would have allowed the continued use of the complainant's mark with limited restrictions and a very nominal fee. Little to say, she saw his website, told us to go fuck ourselves, and dragged it before a judge. My client lost... big. His lack of self-control cost him thousands of dollars."
17."Guy got a divorce in secret by telling the court his wife had left the country when she basically lived down the street. When she discovered this and appealed the divorce, the judge took his side for some reason and had no problem with his lying. I was in complete shock. When I pointed out to the judge that this was legally problematic, his exact words to me were 'I don't care what the law says.' Ugh, I just checked. He's still somehow a judge."
18."I was representing a woman in an eviction where her husband had signed the house over to his girlfriend, and his girlfriend was trying to evict the wife (husband was in jail, and wife had a restraining order against him). Girlfriend shows up to court drunk. The judge stops the hearing, orders a breathalyzer and when she fails, throws her in jail for contempt of court. Opposing counsel tried to tell me she was self-medicating after falling in a hole in the backyard."
19.And finally, "I was working on a $15 million M&A deal, and my client called the buyer’s attorney 'Barney Fife, country hillbilly.' That attorney was the brother of the CEO of the buyer. They got so pissed they dropped the deal."
H/T: r/AskReddit & r/Lawyertalk
Note: some responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.
