Move To Strike: These Lawyers' Cases Unraveled In An Instant
Courtroom trials can take months or even years to go in front of a judge, and lawyers toil for long nights and endless days to get every piece of evidence and cross-examination right. Then, in the blink of an eye, it can all unravel spectacularly.
These lawyers know that horrible feeling well. Thanks to their clients' stupidity, secrets, or both, they lost their case in an instant.
1. Hit And Miss
I spent several hours zealously arguing that my client was severely disabled and couldn’t work due to a back injury. It was so bad that the poor dude couldn’t even sit in a chair throughout the entire proceedings.
But then, after I rest my case, opposing counsel calls in a representative who proceeds to produce record after record of my client’s deer hunting activities.
He sat in a tree, in freezing weather, for many hours, then shot multiple deer and transported their carcasses out of the woods all on his own. Dear God.
2. Two Too Many
I was arguing for my client to be released. The judge asked him where he was going to live. “With my fiancé," he said.
He spun a lovely story about how wonderful and supportive his fiancé was and they were having a baby and wanted to get out so he could take care of his soon-to-be wife and kid to support them properly.
The judge asked the courtroom, "Could the defendant's fiancé please approach the bench?" What happened next made me gasp. From opposite sides of the room, two women got up and started walking to the front. One was about four months pregnant, and the other was nearly nine. They were looking at each other with identical expressions that read, "Who are you?"
You could tell the exact moment when they realized the truth. The look on their faces just screamed, "that girl is screwing my man." The fight started before they even got to the counsel's table. Pregnant or not, these chicks were seriously trying to hurt one another. The bailiffs had to stop laughing long enough to break up the fight. My client was just as shocked.
He said, "Shoot, your Honor, I didn't think they'd both come." The judge said he was denying bail for my client's own protection.
3. Finding Myself
We arrived at my client’s deposition and were ready to discuss her employment issue. The first question was, "Please state your name." The client looked at me and said, "Can we take a break?" We did, and she pulled me out in the hall. Then she made a huge confession. She lied to me about her identity. She was apparently a serial fraudster.
She had changed identities seven times since the 90s. She apparently thought the other attorneys had somehow figured it out which was why they asked the question.
4. Family Feud
It was a special education case. The mother and school were fighting about services. We got new assessments that backed up the mother's claims.
Local school didn't have the right services, so we arranged a transfer for the kid to a larger school not too far away. Good public transit route, and some extra-curriculars the kid was excited about.
She goes to enrol him in school, but comes back and says they have a problem with paperwork. Thinking the transfer information just didn't get there yet, I take a copy and head down there. What I discovered practically unhinged my jaw. No, they actually won’t enrol him because, plot twist, that’s not his real name, and she’s not his real mother.
Turns out, she was the best friend of a woman who was pregnant and about to be incarcerated for trafficking. The friend says, “Can you take my baby while I'm inside? I'll get him as soon as I'm out.” She and her husband say sure.
They sign a piece of notebook paper. Seriously. Then, she ends up keeping the boy for 12 years.
You have to think, how did they manage to navigate school and medical stuff for 12 years with no custody paperwork? They'd just been using an assumed last name for the whole "family" and, like me, no one had asked.
She only got caught because the school had moved to an online system that checked other databases.
Anyway, the biological mom and dad were still alive and still behind bars. Eventually, they consented to letting their son be raised by the couple that had already been his parents for so many years. It was a wild case.
