These Legal Plot Twists Had Us Screaming For Order In The Court
"Law and Order" might work for some judges, but not with these ridiculous cases.
Whether it's an incompetent client or an unhinged attorney, these lawyers' stories of their most outrageous plot twists inside and outside the halls of justice had us banging the gavel and screaming for order in the court.
Buckle up, it's about to get wild.
1. A Shady Past
I used to work at a firm that did a lot of maritime personal injury work. One guy was hurt offshore with a legitimate injury, but the drilling company won't settle, so it goes to trial.
The guy is from some small rural town in East Texas, and the trial is set there. During one of his video depositions, our client shows up in a T-shirt that has a silhouette of a woman dangling from a pole.
At the bottom, there is text that says, “I support single mothers.” Perfect, just what we need for a video deposition. Later, we go to trial, and right as it's about to start, the client goes, "I was hoping we didn't get this judge." My co-lawyer thinks that is strange and asks him why he hoped that. When the man responded, I was chilled to the bone.
Apparently, our client killed the judge's nephew during a break and enter years ago. It was a huge case in this little small town, and it was something the client neglected to mention at any point prior to this. Perfect.
Great thing to know as trial is beginning. Somehow or other, we won the case. I'm honestly still not sure how.
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2. I Rest My Case
I had a case where a man refused to pay rent because his apartment smelled terrible and it was making him sick. So, his landlord tried to evict him. A few days after I took on the case and just before his first hearing, the ceiling in the tenant's bathroom just totally collapsed on him when he came home one day. It revealed a disgusting truth.
Turns out, some plumbing wasn't connected and his ceiling had been filling with poop for months. The landlord settled pretty quickly after that.
3. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
My friend is a big-shot lawyer downtown, and works on high-profile cases. He once told us about this ridiculous case involving a nurse. This nurse was hired to give vaccines to patients at a local string of assisted living homes.
Now, Hepatitis C was very common back in the baby boomer days, from lack of knowledge and a lack of effective protection. So a bunch of these guys had it.
Well, this nurse decided it would be a good idea to reuse the needle they had on EVERY SINGLE patient. She ended up giving Hepatitis C to a bunch of seniors. It was so bad that they had to contact the CDC and consider it an outbreak.
The best part was that the family of the elderly were suing the nurse AND the nursing homes.
Meanwhile, the nursing homes were suing the nurse and the hospital that contracted her out. The NURSE even tried suing the hospital for "lack of training."
Also, the nurse had been given warnings before and was previously let go from another job…because she was reusing needles. Absolutely ridiculous circus show all the way around, honestly.
4. That’s Karma For You
I had a guy come in who spoke almost exclusively in quotes from US Presidents. This was a specialist firm in a very English town, and the dude was about as English as it's possible to be—tweed suit with leather elbow patches English.
He wasn't initially anything to do with me, but half an hour into the initial meeting, my boss wandered into my office totally exasperated.
She said, “Hey, you're a patient man, find out what this loon actually wants. It'll be a good case evaluation for you to handle by yourself." So I spent two hours listening to him talk. Literally every second sentence began with "
As Woodrow Wilson once said..." Or "As Grover Cleveland once said...". He even managed to quote Taft.
Anyway, after two hours I explained how much the meeting was costing him—quite a tidy sum at that point. That’s how I learned why he was really there. He visibly sagged and suddenly blurted out like a naughty child, "I poured bleach on the roots of my neighbor's tree, and it fell into my greenhouse. Can you make him pay for the repairs?"
I gently explained why that wouldn't work, and he cried, so I called the loveliest secretary in the firm, who made him a cup of tea and sat with him until he went home. Sorry, buddy, and good riddance.
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