There's never a dull moment in the world of law. From shocking confessions to life-changing verdicts, the courtroom is always full of drama and tense moments. here are some of the most intense moments that have happened to real people in the court of law:
1. If It Ain’t Broke…
I had some of my friends over at my house, and one of my friends invited one of her other friends to come over. Then the worst moment of my life happened. She had her MacBook on my couch and when I sat on it, I broke it. Since it was completely my fault I offered to pay her the money for it and she agreed. She got the old one three years ago and it cost $2,200 dollars at the time.
I told her I'd wire her the money in a week to her bank account. She's now emailed me, however, saying that as per our conversation, she's expecting the $2,700 that I have agreed to(!!!!) I didn't know why she added the extra money, so I got her number from my friend and called her. She told me that she's now expecting me to pay for her new upgraded MacBook since she was "upgrading anyway." She said if I don't agree to do that she'll be suing me in Small Claims Court.
2. 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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3. 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.
4. Little Girl Lost
For the past seven months after moving into my new house with my daughter and dogs, the neighbors’ 16-year-old child, who has pretty severe Down Syndrome, has increasingly been entering my property and home. At first I just talked to the neighbors and they were really sorry and vowed to monitor her more while she's in their backyard.
However, after a few months they just genuinely do not care anymore and brush it off. But it took a turn for the worse. I've installed security cameras in the backyard and front yard purely for my own safety insurance-wise because we do have a pool. She will climb the fence into my yard with a ladder from their shed and let my dogs out.
I've fixed her letting my dogs "free," as she says, by using chains and padlocks on the two gates. Before this became a common occurrence, she even would let the dogs out of the house and then "free" them. Numerous times if my garage door is open, she will leave their backyard and just walk into my house to “free” my dogs. I don't know what the purpose is other than it's something she just has to do for whatever reason.
When she climbs into the backyard (sometimes when I'm not even home) and she cannot get back out, she begins screaming and crying and just shuts down. Before I started chaining and locking my gates because of her releasing my dogs, her parents would just walk in and get her and leave. Now since I've chained it, they took it up a notch.
They start a huge fit about me having her locked in my backyard and they have to climb the fence, bring the ladder over and carry her back over. Somehow this is my fault. Now I'm not really blaming her because she mentally doesn't know any better. Still, she’s lucky my dogs are super nice. I just honestly worry about her safety in the backyard, climbing fences and her seemingly not being watched as she needs to be.
I have a pool and if she falls in when I'm not home she could very well drown. That's why I installed security cameras to cover my own butt if that ever happens. I truly hope it never does but it seems her parents just put her in the backyard and that's it. I've called the local child and family services office (CPS) several times in the past two months to report it because I feel she is at risk with her parents inattentiveness and their seemingly not caring attitude of her just going into people's yards, garages, houses etc.
I have a full garage of power tools, table saws, etc. that I've now had to resort to flipping the breaker off when I open the doors out of fear she may severely injure herself. I feel like I've done everything I can, talked to the parents numerous times, called child and family services, installed cameras, locked my gates further. I just have no idea what to do now? I've debated calling the authorities when she enters but I don't know how that will escalate.
5. 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.
6. Without A Trace
In June 2019, my neighbors came to my door. I’d had some experiences with them before, as they invited us for a BBQ not long after they moved in. They asked me and my wife if we would look after their pets and their house for the next three weeks, as they needed to return to Taiwan since his mother was dying. They even left me $500 dollars for food for their two German Shepherds and their cat. This is where it gets interesting.
I don't know what happened to them, but they just never came back. I don't know if they ended up in some sort of trouble or decided to just not come home at all. Today I found out their basement flooded, probably sometime within the last week. Apparently a pipe burst, but the entire room is completely screwed. I paid to have the leak fixed and I spent all of today using my shop vac to drain their basement to the best of my abilities.
Between this and one of their dogs needing surgery, I have spent several thousand dollars of my own money, and frankly the damage to the basement was pretty awful. I don't have their insurance paperwork, and don't really know if I can even do a claim for them. On top of this, his two giant German Shepherds, while they are amazingly good boys, are becoming almost too much for us to handle.
Their last name is extremely common, and their Facebook profiles are private, which gives me very little avenue to tackle this down.
7. 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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8. An Apple A Day
I quit drinking soda and energy drinks a few months ago and I replaced that habit with drinking Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Juice. The juice comes in 10 oz. glass bottles that look very similar to Corona bottles. Here lies my issue: This morning I was walking to my car from my apartment and I had a bottle of my juice in one hand and my one-year-old daughter, in her car seat, in the other hand.
My neighbors basically jumped me from behind. One grabbed my daughter’s car seat and the other was punching, kicking, and yelling at me. He was saying stuff like, “The nerve of you to drink and try to drive with your baby.” As a result, my juice bottle shattered in the parking lot, cutting my hand, my cell phone’s screen is destroyed, and I think my nose is fractured.
Most importantly, the neighbor who took my baby went inside his apartment with her and it took 10 minutes of me explaining through the screen door that I was not about drink and drive, but that I WAS DRINKING APPLE JUICE. This all just happened. By the way, I didn’t get any apologies or anything from the neighbors. They said they were doing their “duty” to protect the community.
I called the authorities, and as soon as they pulled up more than a half dozen neighbors came out and gave witness reports.
9. Latte And Order
My family friend is a lawyer. She had someone come to her asking to sue Starbucks because someone spilled their latte on the sidewalk and she slipped on it and hit her head. She claimed Starbucks was at fault because it wouldn't have happened if "Starbucks didn't put extra slippery whipped cream in the drink." My friend did not take the case.
10. Mother Doesn’t Know Best
I'm 15, and my family is deeply religious. I respect that but sometimes, you know, I'm 15, and I have to, you know, rub one out. I try not to but like...I can't concentrate on anything else if I don't. And if I see a pretty girl, it'll get worse. It basically feels like sleeping to me, if I don't do it I can't function. I don’t know if I'm normal or not. I'm definitely ashamed of it.
But I'm not lying I promise. However, my mom doesn't believe me. My dad is out of the picture so I can't talk to him and ask him if this is a guy thing. Anyway, my mom has tried a lot of things to get me to stop. She took my door off, for example. She grounded me and stuff. I try to hide it so she gives up, but now she's come up with a horrific plan.
She decided to get some kind of device and put it on me so that I can't touch myself. She seemed serious and it wouldn't be out of character for her. She also does other weird things, like on Fridays we can't eat at all because of Jesus. I try to respect that but often times I go out on a bike ride and get food somewhere. Because, well, I get hungry. But then this took a twist.
I told my math teacher about my mother—and she got arrested. I got my 13-year-old brother after school yesterday and we went to see my math teacher. I didn't tell him all the details, but I told him my mother wanted to put a device on me to keep me from being intimate. At first he wanted to call our mom but that actually made my brother cry in fear so he didn't because I told him I'd run away and call the authorities if he did.
Still, he called a bunch of people, and about an hour later officers a bunch of other people showed up. Apparently they'd already been suspicious about our neighborhood. That’s when the lid on my family blew right off. Turns out, my mother has been doing things like burning us for punishment that are completely verboten and I honestly never really knew. They also found a stash of substances she apparently does with our preacher.
My mother wasn't home but all my other six siblings who are homeschooled were. Then they went down the street to where my mom and our preacher were and I don't know what happened but they took her in think for drugs and other stuff, but not the preacher. There were a bunch of people who talked to all of us and eventually they took us to a place where they said we'd stay for now.
I should have done this years ago, I feel really bad because I could have had my siblings taken better care of. I don't really know what's happening or going to happen, but the place I'm in now is way cleaner than I'm used to and we have clothes and stuff and food and we don't have to watch toddlers anymore. They weren't happy when they figured out stuff like the burns and that my 11- and 10-year-old sisters can't read at all.
They also weren't very happy with our house I could tell. I hope we don't have to go back.
11. A Universal Language
I dealt with a guy once who wanted me to take on his road traffic accident claim. He had written a poem, in Yoruba, about the accident. He refused to tell me anything about his case until he's read the whole thing, in Yoruba. Among other problems, I can't speak any freaking Yoruba. As in, not one word. As in, that day was the first time I had ever heard of the Yoruba language.
I'm not even from a part of the world where I might readily be mistaken for someone who speaks Yoruba. It's a West African language, and I am really, really obviously not from a West African background. I try to explain this to the guy, who becomes very agitated and insists that he must read out his poem in Yoruba. I give up and tell him to get on with it so we can talk about his claim.
He does. It takes him nearly 20 minutes to finish. Anyway, after he's done, he finishes and sits back with a big smile and says that he's certain I'll take his case on now, as if it's all completely clear. I begin to ask him some questions about his case, but he refuses to answer. He says that this poem (in Yoruba) is everything I need to know about his case.
Basically, I tell him to screw off and stop wasting my time. He does, but not before standing around outside my office for an hour or so, reading out his poem, to no-one in particular, over and over again. In Yoruba.
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12. Power Trip
I live in a small town in Wisconsin so law enforcement kind of knows everybody. But there’s this one officer who keeps pulling me over for the craziest and most asinine reasons, like I was too close to the curb or I stopped too close to the stop sign. He’s a young, attractive cop and I’m young and attractive as well, so I’m thinking he’s trying to flirt with me or something?
But the situations are so aggravating and the things he says and does seem like he’s intentionally trying to antagonize me so that I’ll say or do something out of anger and he’ll have an excuse to escalate the situation. But today he crossed the line. He pulled me over again under the guise that I wasn’t going the speed limit (it was 45 and I was going 50) and when he came to my car and said his usual stuff in the most condescending way, he said he had to search ME, not the car, because my car smelled funny.
My car smells like vanilla and I’ve never smoked anything in there so I know he was lying to me again. I told him that if he wants to search me he’ll have to get a female officer to do it, but he said if I don’t comply he’ll detain me. So I got out of the car. He told me to put my hands on my car so I did, and he just starts rubbing me up and down. Not even searching for anything, just rubbing me.
He went over my thighs twice, my lower back, and almost cupped my breasts. I was wearing a skin-tight skirt set, no pockets, and you could clearly see that I had nothing on me. I’m typing this like 30 minutes after it happened, I’m upset and angry and I feel violated. Is there any way I can get him in trouble for this? I have a GoPro in my car but I don’t know if it caught this on camera, as I didn’t check yet.
13. She Said, She Said
I worked on a custody dispute between a mother and grandmother, where both sides were absolutely outraged by the others' claims. The mother was very upset that she was alleged to have been a stripper. In her own incensed words, "I was a sex worker, but I NEVER did that!" The grandmother, in return, was furious that she was alleged to have 21 cats in her two-bedroom apartment.
In HER iconic words, "We only have 17 cats! How DARE she flat-out lie and say that we have 21 cats." The child ended up living with the father in a different state.
14. Family Means Love
Hi, so my life is falling apart. A few weeks ago, my father and my stepmother perished in a car accident. They have been married for seven years, and my stepmother had a daughter from a previous marriage who is eight years old. I love her unconditionally as if she were my own sister and I would fight tooth and nail to keep her safe. She has no immediate family other than her father in the area, so he was going to receive full custody of her.
Except this guy is an enormous jerk. The reason my stepmother left him is because he was abusive, although she never reported it, and the reason he was abusive was because my stepsister was born and he didn't want a child. As a result, he has never cared about her, never asked to see her, and has never wanted anything to do with her…until now, that is.
I was at home with my stepsister a few days ago and he knocked on the door. I opened it and we had a really ugly conversation about what was going to happen to my stepsister now that her mother and my father were gone. I told him that if he did end up having custody I would want to be seeing her as often as possible as I consider her my family. His reply stunned me.
He told me, verbatim, "That's not gonna happen, son. I don't want my daughter spending time with half caste blood." He's referring to the fact that my father is mixed race, and that I am too as a result. I slammed the door. I was absolutely livid. But then I got to work. I got a family lawyer who was one of the most kind and helpful people I've ever met in my life.
I told her the circumstances of my stepmom and dad’s passing through tears and sobbing, and then she told me she'd do everything she possibly could to help me. After my stepsister’s bio dad was informed that I would be trying to get full custody, he basically folded within hours. The lawyer told me that it wouldn't have mattered anyway, though.
She said that because he hadn't visited her for such an extended period of time that it was considered "abandonment" in the eyes of the law, and the likelihood of him specifically getting custody was unlikely because of this. After her bio dad said he didn't want my stepsister, I then spent weeks and weeks filing out the right papers and seeing the right people.
I've never signed so many things in my entire life. Because my stepsister had no biological family other than her dad, I was given custody on a silver platter, according to my lawyer. Her bio dad didn't ask for visitation rights, and it appears he didn't even care in the first place, he just wanted my stepsister for no reason other than to further upset me.
Yesterday, I signed the last piece of paper that confirmed that I had 100% custody of my stepsister. After I signed, we both cried and cried for hours. We're both working on processing what happened to her mom and my dad. As I write this, she's asleep next to me with her head on my shoulder. The past two months have hands down been the worst of my entire life.
I consider meeting my stepsister the best thing that's ever happened to me, and adopting her is the single best decision I've ever made. These events have made me realize that family isn't just DNA-based, it's actionable investments in the life of someone you love. I hope you all lead wonderful lives. Give your loved ones a big hug for me.
15. Sing It With Me: Five...Five...Five-Dollar Foot-Long
I once worked as a prosecutor on the misdemeanor docket, and I heard some really amazing defenses that, if the defendant had an attorney, they would definitely not have made. My favorite was this guy charged with speeding who gave what I now call “the five-dollar foot-long defense.” He pled guilty, but he wanted to provide an explanation to the judge. It became legendary.
He said that he had just eaten a five-dollar roast beef foot-long from Subway and was speeding to get home before he fell asleep because roast beef is a sedative. The judge chuckled and asked if he meant to say turkey, a lunchmeat that might cause some form of mild sedation. The man realized his mistake and said that the five-dollar foot-long contained both.
At this point, I am trying not to burst out laughing. Honestly, he used the word “five-dollar foot-long” about a half dozen times by this point, like he was actively advertising for Subway. The judge said he didn't think there was such a five-dollar foot-long available at Subway. At this point, the entire courtroom was laughing.
The judge told him to choose his food more carefully and slow down, along with giving him the maximum fine.
16. A Bird Of A Different Feather
To make a long story short, I’m a late 20-something living in Oregon. I had a pretty intense goth phase as a tween that I thought I had grown out of. A couple months ago, I was watching a nature program on our local station about crows. The program mentioned that if you feed and befriend them, crows will bring you small gifts. My emo phase came back full force.
I figured that I was laid off and had lots of time, so why not make some crow friends. My plan worked way too well. The resident five crows in my neighborhood have turned into an army of 15 strong. At first my neighbors didn’t mind and enjoyed it. They're mostly elderly and most were in a bird watching club anyway. They thought the fact that I had crows following me around whenever I go outside was funny.
Lately, though, the crows have started defending me. My neighbor came over for a chat and the crows started diving at her. They would not stop until she left my yard. They didn’t make physical contact with her, but they got very close. Honest question: Am I liable if these crows injure someone, since I fed them? I obviously can’t control the crows.
I would rather them not attack my neighbors. But since I technically created this nuisance, could I be financially on the hook for any injuries? To be clear, they're not aggressive 100% of the time. If just the neighbors are out they are friendly normal crows. They only get aggressive when someone gets close to me or my property. Honestly, what have I done?
17. Is It Art?
I defended a vengeful guy who sent poop through the mail to his ex-girlfriend from behind bars. I don't know how it got past the wardens, but it did, and the guy didn't even deny sending the package. However, the case went to trial because he wanted me to argue that the poop was expressive speech, and thus protected by the First Amendment. We lost.
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18. Strings Attached
I worked as head bartender for a local restaurant for a number of years, and there was a regular customer who was there very frequently. I interacted with this customer frequently, too. They tipped exclusively in scratch tickets and specifically called to ask for my schedule, asked me out on multiple occasions, et cetera. Probably about 40 years my senior.
Then I won something from the scratch ticket that wasn't five or 10 dollars; the final amount after taxes was about three months’ salary for me, and I was making good money. I specifically didn't tell the customer, not because I thought they wouldn't want it but because I didn't want them feeling like I owed them something or that I should be thankful towards them.
I did tell a co-worker, and it got to the customer through the grapevine. The next time I came in, he congratulated me, and asked me a question that sent a shiver down my spine. He asked how we wanted to split it. I sternly told him that it was my tip and long story short, he went to my manager, who took his side. I actually quit since I had been planning to anyway since I'm about to finish school. But that wasn't the end.
My manager then GAVE THIS GUY MY EMAIL and he (the customer) emailed me saying that if I didn't agree to give him 50% of the winnings he'd take court action. Do I need to worry about taking his threat seriously? Is there anything I can or should do to protect myself? I'm assuming this is a bluff but I want to have my bases covered.
19. No Compensation
I’m a worker’s compensation attorney. I now represent injured people, but used to work on the other side. This is the case that made me switch. There was an applicant who fell off a ladder, busted his back, got his shoulder messed up, and needed years of treatment. He had physical and psychological issues. The poor guy was really messed up, so he went to court to get permanent disability payments from my client. We were five years into the lawsuit and finally getting to settlement time.
If we bought out his future medical, the settlement would be pretty far into six figures, which is a lot, but keep in mind that this guy was the sole provider for wife and two young kids. Then we made a jaw-dropping discovery. We found out that the man had aggressive brain cancer. He would only live for a couple more years, at best.
Thus, my client wouldn’t have to pay him for very long. In the end, the man did get disability pay for $60k-ish per year. But because he'd only get that one check, what should have been millions was much, much less. I felt terrible for the guy and his family. I tried to get my client, the insurance company, to agree to a more humane amount given the circumstances, but the bean counters said heck no.
The attorney knew it wasn’t me making the decision. Even though he worked on that guy’s file for 5+ years he decided to take $0 in fees. I have so much respect for that attorney turning down $10k+ in fees to help his client in a very sad situation.
20. Sleepaway Camp
I am 16 years and two months old. My parents believe I am a disaster and unruly child, but they are delusional parents. My mother has bipolar disorder and does not take her meds regularly and I'm sure my father has undiagnosed mental health problems as well. They have been wanting to send me to a camp for troubled teenagers for a while, and two people recently came to take me without me knowing.
I thought they were kidnapping me. I screamed and my brother who was at home (but wasn't supposed to be) took my father's gun and threatened to kill them. That was when they told us who they are and why they are here. We called the authorities but they did nothing after they talked to our parents. I do not trust my parents anymore and I want to get emancipated. I don't think my parents will object; they will be happy to get rid of me.
21. The Veteran
I used to represent veterans to get their service-connected disability benefits. I represented a homeless veteran who told me that he had been stationed in a certain conflict zone. Everything he said corroborated with the timeline and how events played out, and the story barely changed so I took him at face value. I argued to get him compensation for his PTSD with the earliest effective date possible. Then I expedited the hearing due to his homeless status. I got him six figures and off the streets for a while.
I went to town for this guy and worked hard to make sure he got a good result. But then, I learned the real story. The man's full records finally came in two long years after I had first requested them. It turns out that the man had been in the forces, but he had never served in the zone that he said traumatized him. In fact, he never served overseas at all. Kind of burned me out after that.
22. Skeletons In The Closet
I’m 16 and I have good reason to think my mom and dad aren't my real parents. I had a much older sister who completed suicide when I was six and she was 26. All of her stuff is in the basement in boxes. I don't remember too much about her honestly and it makes me sad sometimes. My parents don't talk much about her.
There's also a painting in our house that she painted. It's a very nice painting of a swamp, and it's my favorite thing. Anyway, one day I decided to go looking through all of her stuff, mostly for more pictures. What I found was a bunch of notebooks of writing she did, mostly poetry. I felt weird reading them at first because they were mostly about her depression…then I read a story that cut me to the bone.
I read this one that was about how she had a baby and someone took him away. It's really short and I didn't really understand it, like a lot of it seemed metaphorical I guess is the word. Anyways, I asked my mom if she ever had a baby and my mom was really weird about it. She wanted to know why I would ask that. I said I just found some stuff in the basement and was curious.
She got mad at me and told me not to snoop and said she didn't have kids. Then I started thinking about it. I am the spitting image of my sister but I don't look like my mom or dad. I casually asked my mom to see my birth certificate the next day and she got mad again and wouldn't let me see it.
23. Not So Friendly Now
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 court record. I tried to reason with him, saying that it was up to the sovereign nation to set its own rules regarding entry to their 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.
24. Keep An Open Mind
My mom and stepdad are really into "new age" science and beliefs. I've never agreed with them on this but didn't know how extreme it was. Recently, they have become involved in an extremely weird "support group." I say that in quotes because I have no clue who they are. When I'm around they never mention any group names or what "organization" they work for or are a part of.
Because of this, I have not had much luck finding out stuff as "new age cult" gives too many results to look into. This Monday, my mom and stepdad sat me and my four siblings down. They told us that we will be moving at the end of the month to a more "stable" location within a spiritual community. Oh, and that's just the start. According to them, they plan to pull all five of us out of school here and enroll us in their "mind awakening" school wherever we move.
I tried to get anything out of them but they refused to talk to me at all about it. According to them, because I’m still a child in "mind, body, and spirit,” I need to listen to them not ask questions. I’m 16. I've actually been freaking out since then and have been trying to get advice but I've been unable to. They cut off the internet, phone, and TV and they have been keeping a laser focus on me and my siblings since then.
I'm currently at a friend’s house and this is the only way I've actually got access to the internet. This seems like a cult 100% to me. Last night they had three people come and talk to me and my siblings, and what they told us was absolutely crazy. I was talked to alone by an old man who told me about how my mind is "closed" and that I will slowly learn to open it as my parents have and that the "leaders" will love to meet me and put me in their programs.
I need to know what I can do here. My dad has shared custody of me but I’ve had no contact with him since they told us. He is supposed to have a call with me every night but my mom claims he's been "informed" and supports this 100%. I tried calling him this morning but he didn't answer. He lives in another state so it's kind of hard to get into contact with him outside of phone and email.
I'm at a friend’s house because I was able to leave the house for the first time in a week this morning after I told my parents I wanted to go to the park, but came here and told my friend everything. Her parents are not home but she's trying to call them and I plan to stay here tonight if I can. My parents have forbid me from using the internet because it's "full of lies from them."
I'm so lost right now it makes me sick. I do not want to go with them to this obvious compound. I also will be going and buying a burner phone tomorrow and withdrawing all my money from the bank.
25. An Old Grudge
I’m a lawyer in a small town. I mostly do estate planning, probate, old people stuff, etc. I have a client who sued his ex-wife for not selling the house after the divorce as she was supposed to. Judge held her in contempt, and asked what my client wanted to do about it. His revenge was brutal. He had his ex-wife thrown in the slammer. They are both nearly 80 years old.
The client also has something valuable buried on his property for his grandchildren after he passes. I have a sealed letter in my desk that he pays me a goodly sum each month to hold and give to his grandson when he’s gone.
26. Get It Off Your Chest
I had breast cancer about a year and a half ago. I got surgery and luckily I didn’t have to undergo chemo or radiation. Surgery was able to remove all my tumors. I still have check-ups and screenings occasionally, however, and have to miss work. Another co-worker in another department has breast cancer but unfortunately was unable to have it removed by only surgery and had to be out longer.
She is still undergoing treatment. I declined reconstruction on my breasts so I was able to come back to work at 3 1/2 weeks. I have no breast on my left side, just a flat scar—no breast tissue and I have no nipple and only a smaller amount of breast tissue on my right side. They removed a lot of breast tissue with a lumpectomy but were able to salvage about 55% of the tissue.
My co-workers and my immediate supervisor have been talking about my breast cancer for weeks because I had to miss an important meeting for an MRI and a bone scan. I requested it off and got my manager and HR to approve it. But now this co-worker and supervisor have been spreading rumors that because I came back to work so soon that I didn’t actually have breast cancer.
I wear a prosthetic at work so no one sees me flat. They are saying everyone they know with any cancer always has to take a lot of time off work and I seem fine. Someone said they saw me out at the store—this was after an oncology appointment that was approved by my manager, and I did stop by the grocery store on my way home—and I looked fine.
Again, I am not on chemo so my appointments are check-ups and blood draws. I feel fine after. They are emotionally draining but physically I feel great. It got to the point where I was scared to even take appointments because I knew coming back to work would be the worst. Again, my manager has always been supportive and HR too. This is just my supervisor and my co-workers.
I have surgery coming up to help with some scarring. They are just going to clean up some of the tissue now that everything has healed and I have been cancer-free for over a year. I let my supervisor know they are thinking about scheduling it for the summer and he said, “Right, the cancer thing again.” One particular day last week, I got upset because I heard them in the office next door talking about me.
They were saying I was scamming everyone and that I didn’t deserve the upcoming raises. They talked again about how I didn’t have cancer. Then I did something supremely stupid. I got upset, walked over, lifted my shirt and prosthetic bra, and showed them the scars on my chest. I did cover my remaining 55% there breast with no nipple with my hand, but my scars were on display for all to see.
I then told them to go screw themselves and went back to my desk. This was on Friday at 3:30 pm. I left at 4:30 like I always do. No one has said anything. It is now Monday and I am worried. I had time to think over the weekend and realized it was a huge mistake. I should have just gone to HR about the gossip. I have seen my manager but they haven’t said anything.
My supervisor hasn’t said anything. None of my gossiping co-workers have said anything. The ones that don’t gossip haven’t said anything and are acting like normal. What should I do to un-mess this up? What can I expect them to do to me?
27. Who You Gonna Call?
This call came through on a dreary December day as I was sipping coffee and watching the snowfall. The caller ID read that it was the local hospital, and as I picked up, I spoke to a rather frantic young man who informed me he was being held against his will and he needed an attorney to help him. When I asked where he was, he simply said "the fifth floor."
While this may sound innocuous, every hospital has a "fifth floor," where Napoleon roams the halls freely and the residents speak to their imaginary friends who may, or may not, have been an influencing factor in why they decided that clothing was a way for the government to track them and therefore the only solution was to create Poop Pants to throw off the monitoring ability of the CIA.
Long story short, within an hour of the call a friend had dropped off my fee, and I was en route to the Fifth Floor to meet with my new client. I assumed it would be an involuntary committal defense, and after speaking with my client I gauged that, while the man was most definitely in need of mental care, he was not a danger to himself or others.
He had, in my opinion, been forced to agree to being committed by his probation officer, and frankly I wasn't going to let that stand. I got the name of some contacts from his treatment plan who were willing to vouch that he had, until recently, been compliant with his medications, and contacted his social worker who was able to confirm that, yes, since he had ceased taking the medication due to an inability to afford the medications, the county would assist him with it.
A slam dunk. I would get him released, then appear in the court to defend him against the involuntary committal. Within 24 hours of being committed, my client was back at home. A hearing was set a couple of weeks in the future, and I did daily checks to be certain he was compliant with his medication leading up to the hearing...until the one day I didn't.
A call from the local authorities was my tip-off. An older officer, one I was familiar with, called to advise they had responded to a disturbance at my client's home. He apparently had been screaming in an empty room loud enough that the neighbors were concerned and called them. The officer, a friendly sort, gauged the situation and decided my client wasn't a threat, but asked what the situation was.
"The ghost," my client responded, "The ghost won't get out and it won't leave me alone." "Well," said the officer, "I can tell it to leave." So he did. He told the ghost to leave. And then, apparently for fun, the officer told him that it was a "civil matter" if the ghost refused to leave, and therefore an attorney would need to be contacted.
At which point my client dropped my name...which resulted in the officer giving me a heads up. So, I call my client, who is inconsolable at the concept of sharing his home with the ghost. Keep in mind, I've been to this guy's house. This is the first I've heard of a ghost. But there is a competency hearing on the horizon, and this will not play well in front of the judge.
"The officer said it's a civil matter," my client repeated about the 18th time after I told him I was not, in fact, a priest, but was a lawyer and didn't know how to perform an exorcism. "What do you want me to do," I snapped a bit, "Evict it?" There are moments in time when you should keep your mouth shut. This is one of them. Of course, the immediate response was "CAN YOU? THAT'D BE GREAT!"
Well, darn. So, I ended up driving out there with a mock-up Notice to Quit addressed to "Any spirits in possession of the property without any authority under color of law," advising them that their possession was "unlawful in nature" and ordering them to "quit and surrender the premises, or any portion thereof, within fifteen (15) days of the date of this notice."
I had my client direct me to the portion of the premises the Ghost occupied, an empty spare bedroom, and made service by posting the Notice to the door of the room. I then announced that the ghost "HAD BEEN SERVED A VALID NOTICE TO QUIT AND SURRENDER POSSESSION" and went home. A week later, as we're preparing to enter the Court for my client's competency hearing, I ask about the status.
"Oh, it worked great!" my client announced. "He moved out the same night and took all his stuff with him." The ghost apparently had "stuff." Anyhow, I smiled and patted my client on the shoulder as I offered some sage advice. "Well, good," I said, "Now, let's not mention this in front of the judge. He might have a problem with the service and order us to let the ghost back in if he finds out about it."
My client nodded enthusiastically. I kept him out of the mental hospital that day, and take some comfort knowing somewhere today, this crazy guy is still telling people about his great lawyer who got rid of his ethereal roommate for free.
28. Famous For The Wrong Reasons
My butthole has been a location on Facebook since 2012 and I can't get it removed. I wish this was fake but it's not. The first thing you see when you type in my full name on Google is "Original Poster's Butthole.” This page was created in 2012, and I was only 15 at the time. I have reported it a million times, and even asked friends to report it. It's humiliating.
I tried requesting the name change of the page and reported it under every option possible. Facebook says it doesn't violate terms. I tried claiming it as my business since at the bottom of the page it claims to be automatically generated off interest of the topic, and it wouldn't let me claim it. It was never a business. I was a child. I feel so hopeless.
29. Family Or Furniture
I did a divorce where the husband (who I was representing) wanted to trade custody of his children for a set of bedroom furniture. The bedroom furniture was not even like a family heirloom. It was furniture that you could probably get at a Rooms-to-Go or something. Ugh, even thinking of that guy still makes me ill. That's why I got out of family law.
30. Let It Go
Five years ago, I was stalked for six months by a guy I knew less than a month as an actual person. We dated very briefly; I broke things off and things seemed amicable…until he started showing up outside my house and demanding I be with him or else. He had decided that he was a good man and he deserved a chance. He threatened that if he didn't get a chance, he'd kill me or hopefully I’d kill myself.
After six months of daily threats, 10+ reports, multiple restraining order attempts, moving, and getting rid of all social media, he found me anyway and kicked my door in at midnight. This is where my world spun out of control. I shot him in the chest in self-defense, and he was finally sentenced and went behind bars. I thought I was done with him. I was so, so wrong.
I guess he was on parole for about four months after his release recently because I immediately started receiving messages and comments from him afterward; he just picked right back up where he left off. I contacted the parole board and they said he was released from supervision a few days before. I have contacted the authorities and was approved for a restraining order but of course they haven’t been able to serve it.
They said they can’t prove the messages are from him despite him using his name, posting his pictures, and literally commenting my name and talking about the shooting in the comment replies. The detective is waiting for a subpoena to prove it’s him. I am documenting every bit of harassment of course…but I am just...exhausted. I am so incredibly frustrated with the lack of help available and closed doors there are for people being stalked.
31. What Lies Beneath
I worked at a law office and sat in on some meetings to take notes. We had a guy come in for his case evaluation, and my boss, the lawyer, asked what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to sue this lake. I did my best to keep a straight face, and my boss asked the guy why he wanted to sue the lake. I’ll never forget what he told us that day.
He said that it ate his boat. We asked if he meant it sunk. He said that no, it didn't, the lake ate it. The boat was gone one day and he checked the video. The video showed the water level of the lake rise almost four inches and fall again, which caused the boat to break loose from the dock and sink. He showed us the video and sure enough, here is this little four-person boat and exactly that happened.
My boss said that she'd take the case, but couldn't guarantee how well it would do in court. When my boss said she'd need some money to process the paperwork, the guy threw down a brick of cash. There are some real weirdos out there.
32. A Friend In Need
Last month, a friend of mine began to cross a flooded river in his car with me in it. I jumped out because I'd been caught on a flooded causeway before. I now have a letter from his lawyer asking for damages because the car was washed off the causeway and written off. I'm pretty sure this is a case of my (probably ex) friend being an idiot on a lawyer's letterhead or not telling his lawyer the whole story.
When I'm in the middle of it, it feels a lot different though. Early in November, we went to pick up car parts after work that my friend I'll call Aaron (because his name's Aaron and I think he's being an idiot) had bought on eBay. We had to go through some back roads to get to the property and picked it up and all was well. It'd been raining for part of the day but really picked up when we were loading the parts.
We got to a causeway we'd passed only an hour before, but it was now covered in what looked like half a meter of water and we stopped. I'd been navigating and knew we could back up and take another much longer route, even though the highway was just a bit on the other side of the causeway. There was no way I'd go through the water as it looked, because I'd been caught on a causeway 20 years ago in less water and had my car pushed off into the river.
I didn't want to risk it. I didn't lose that car but it was one of the scariest moments of my life. I said we had to turn back and could take a different road and that it would take us via a bridge over the same river. Aaron decided to push on and started moving and I panicked and got straight out. It was FAR more water than I'd had to go through when I nearly lost my car and life before.
Aaron didn't even get halfway across before the water pushed his car off the side, rolled it completely over, and it ended upright on the bank downstream. He was EXTREMELY lucky not to drown, and I ran down and helped him out. Immediately he was aggressive and combative because he said with my weight in the car he'd have made it across.
The car is commodore wagon with a couple hundred kg of eBay parts in the back, so it's not like I'd have made much difference. We phoned for help and the river went down within an hour and we made it across the causeway by foot. We haven't spoken since and he's avoided me in places we usually go. But on Friday I received a letter from a lawyer I know is real in our town, but it sounds like it was written by my friend.
It's asking for $50k for the car and personal damages because I made the car unsafe by getting out. It was a 1997 commodore, maybe worth $1,500 on a good day. I think he's being a jerk.
33. Animal Instinct
A woman called saying that she had a product liability suit involving animal crackers she gave to her daughter. I was thinking it was going to be something to do with food poisoning and kept listening. I wish I’d never heard her next words. She explained that when she looked at the crackers, it looked like the monkey was holding its ding-dong.
Well, nope, it was a banana. Still, this woman was mortified and ashamed. She said she told all her co-workers, and they were very shocked and uncomfortable. I wanted to tell her she was nuts and that they were probably freaked out, but I didn’t.
34. You Get What You Give
I’m not sure what to do. Earlier today, my neighbor came pounding on my door shouting at me. When I finally got him to stop yelling, I found out that he was flying his drone in my backyard again and this time my dog finally managed to catch it and destroy it. He claims this was a $900 drone and I had to pay him right then and there. I refused and closed the door in his face.
A couple of hours later, an officer showed up to retrieve the drone. It was still in my yard, but my dog completely ignored it once it stopped buzzing. The officer asked about the situation. He said the neighbor called them, stating that I refused him access to my yard to get it. That's not true, he never asked. I'm worried the neighbor will try to press charges against me for the destruction of property or sue me.
He has a history of flying his drone low over my yard to tease my dog. I have asked him to stop several times, which he always refuses, telling me that I don't own the air above my yard. I have called the authorities to complain once before, as he was doing "fly bys" over my dog and getting very close to hitting him. The authorities didn't say he couldn't fly it in my yard but did ask him to stop doing so in order to avoid conflict. That only seemed to egg him on.
35. A Dramatic Reveal
I practice immigration law. I had a woman come in and explain that she was from Canada, had been living and working in the US without permission for decades. Boyfriend beat her up to the point where she was hospitalized. She pressed charges and the boyfriend basically let her know via friends that his lawyer was going to call her credibility into question since she was an unlawful immigrant.
It turns out her mom was born in the US and met the dad in college, which meant that she could gain dual citizenship via mom. We got her citizenship certificate expedited and I made her promise not to tell anyone. Sure enough, at trial, the defense attorney asks, “Isn't it true that you are a Canadian citizen who has been working in the US for decades?” To which she replies, “No. In fact, here's my certificate of citizenship. I'm a dual Canadian and US citizen.”
She said the lawyer looked like a puppet when someone cut the strings. Boyfriend became a guest of the State for a long time.
36. Too Close For Comfort
Background: my mom worked at a very small hospital in a very small town for 30+ years and is close to most of the doctors, nurses, and office workers, not only in the hospital but around the whole town as well. My GP, who I have seen since I was ~10 years old, is one of the people my mother is close with. I moved away for college when I was 18 but continued seeing him due to just not wanting to mess with finding a new GP and my mom wanting me to continue seeing him, since I've seen him half my life. This was a huge mistake.
I get routine blood work done to measure how my liver is doing as well as monitor the levels of a certain medication I take to make sure that I'm not getting too little/too much. The results of this information or the fact that I have those tests done isn't a big secret I want to keep, they don't really mean anything unless I were to become sick and they don't test for information, like say illicit drugs.
The first time I had this work done, I hadn't been to that doctor in a while to really remember if this had happened in the past, but they called my mom with my results. They even told her specifics, like what my liver enzymes were and what the medication level was. Again, it's not like to my mother this is anything I want to hide, but it was a little concerning that she got the call and I never received any call about my results.
I go in for these monthly, so the next month that I went I told the woman working in the lab of the office that I wanted to update my information to make sure I got the results. I thought also since I had been seeing this doctor since I was 10, I probably had never given them my phone number. A few days later, it happened again.
My mother again got the call and called to tell me my results; I again got no call from the office. Once again, not a big deal, but since this happened when I explicitly gave my phone number in place of my mother's, I was a little ticked off that I wasn't called again. I chose to wait until my next lab work to say anything again anyway. At this visit, I had both lab work and an appointment to get a refill on birth control.
My doctor asked me to do a pregnancy test in with this blood work due to me running out of said birth control a few days earlier. I wasn't worried that I was pregnant, but I knew that now it was serious time to make them stop calling my mom with my results. I asked the lady drawing my blood to confirm my phone number to see if it even got put in last time.
It did, so on my way out I stopped to talk to the women who always work in the office/at the desk and tell them explicitly that I and I alone want to be called for my results, not my mother. They nonchalantly agreed and I asked them to check my phone number on the system they use in the office, and it was there. I happened to be visiting in town during this time and staying with my mom, who, you guessed it, got the phone call right in front of me telling her my results, including the negative pregnancy test. That’s when my mom BLEW UP at me.
She starts asking why I needed to take a pregnancy test, even though I didn't think this was a big deal especially since it was negative. That all blew over, but at this point I was so mad that she kept getting this information. I ended up getting into it with my mom, telling her that that was a direct breach of HIPAA and she knows it after working in a hospital.
She laughed it off and said something about the doctor knowing me since I was born, her being friends with the office ladies and the doctor, and the one that hit me the most: "It's not a big deal, I'm your mom!" Since then, I've been getting my lab work done elsewhere. To no surprise, there are no issues. I don't really know what to do here. Since I cut ties with that doctor, I no longer have personal problems with this, but I don’t want him to do it to anyone else.
37. Semantics In The Court
I witnessed a pathologist win a case in court by destroying the defense's credibility. The question was over whether or not carbon monoxide could have caused certain signs of death in an individual, but the defense didn't study their chemistry very well and kept asking the pathologist whether "carbon dioxide" could have caused these signs.
After thoroughly frustrating the defense by answering his questions "incorrectly," the pathologist said very loudly, "OH I'm sorry, did you mean carbon monoxide? Because that's a completely different thing." Completely destroyed the defense's credibility in front of the jury. They were done after that. The opposing counsel screwed himself by not picking up a book.
38. Everything Has A Price
So my parents are heavily Mormon and we just recently had a tithing settlement, and when they asked me if I had paid my tithing I told them no. They then asked me if I had a plan to “fix” that and I told them that I worked too hard just to give that money away. Anyways so afterward, my mom, who is my account co-owner as I am under 18, decided to take 10% of my bank account out and refuses to give it back.
This isn’t right, so I planned to slowly, over the next few days, withdraw the money over time. But then it got ridiculous. Turns out, my dad is sick of my mom overspending so he did two things. He’s stopped paying tithing himself AND swapped my mom’s credit card for a debit card. My mom took my money to pay off tithing for him and she gave me roughly $200 back.
She said she’ll give me the rest back and that she’s still disappointed in me for not paying my tithing. Still, it doesn’t sound like I’m getting my money back any time soon. Both my parents are in a significant amount of debt, and my parents fought a lot yesterday apparently. My mom spent almost $10,000 on stuff for the past month or so.
My dad has started making cuts in our budget to fix this, tithing being one of them. I’m still following through with taking my money and putting it in a place where my parents can’t touch it. Just in case they get any ideas.
39. Single White Female
Every day was "outrageous” as a lawyer. The very first person I ever spoke to in a lawyer capacity was a woman who wanted to sue her contractor for an unfinished job and emotional distress. First, being upset at an incomplete job isn't emotional distress. Second, upon further questioning, I learned that this contractor had actually completed all the terms of the contract.
This woman eventually admitted she was suing him because he was "rude and always late." I informed her that we would not take this case. Additionally, I warned her that a failure to pay the contract would most likely result in the contractor suing her. She found this idea ludicrous and began to yell at me in my office—first person on my first day—about how she had a right as an American that I act as her lawyer.
So I handle that: We are not helping her in this case. Two days later, I get a call that makes me want to faint. It’s the contractor's attorney, stating that this woman has cited me as her attorney and threatened a hailstorm of suits upon the contractor from me. It took all of five minutes for the other guy to realize what was going on.
Heck, he even made sure to remind me of the steps I should take to protect myself from any related suits this lady might bring upon me. So, about a month or two passes. The woman comes in again, furious because the contractor sued her and was able to get a lien on the property. She said this was my fault because I didn't help her.
I manage to talk her down. She then immediately gets fired up again because "they are trying to scam her into giving them all her documents." Turns out, a trial on the matter was coming up in about a week, and they had requested photographs of allegedly unfinished work, damages, etc. as well as the original contract and payment receipts.
Basically, all typical stuff that’s reasonable to request and that she is obligated to provide. She thought that evidence was supposed to be a "surprise" at trial, and that sharing this information beforehand would hurt her case. NO duh it would hurt her case, because she is a LIAR. Anyways, again. Not her lawyer. I actually make her sign a paper signifying she understands this.
She leaves. Months pass. I'm no longer working at my old job. So the lady finds me at my school. I get a call from the freaking Dean asking me to swing by. Says he just met with a disgruntled client of mine who says I cost her her home, marriage, and children. Apparently, things went downhill fast. She claimed she would do everything in her power to make sure I never did anything again.
Well, the Dean is a nice guy and helped me with my restraining order paperwork.
40. You Can Always Do More
I am a 16-year-old Junior in high school and work part-time at a gym. I generally open the gym on weekends at 7 am, and am alone in the building until our housekeeping staff comes in at 8:00. It starts out slow as members come in, and usually picks up around 9 when our Sales staff and General Manager come in. The gym is a two-story facility.
Earlier this morning around 8ish, I was approached by another member who stated there was a woman in the locker room downstairs who was laying on a bench shaking and presumably having a seizure. So I RUN downstairs to the locker room, and sure enough, there is a woman shaking uncontrollably, but breathing. I had my cell phone with me and immediately called 9-1-1.
I stayed on the phone with the dispatcher while waiting for the EMTs and paramedics, who arrived about five minutes later. The dispatcher stated I should absolutely NOT try to perform CPR/First Aid (I am licensed) or move her, only to hold onto her to make sure she did not fall off the bench. The EMTs manage to revive her, and she gets wheeled out of the gym and to the hospital.
I'd say we were in the locker room for about 20 minutes trying to convince her to go—she was VERY stubborn. There was a personal trainer who was there to help me and for whom I am EXTREMELY grateful. I filled out an Incident report and filed it with our GM when he came in. We have had concerns with this member before, as she has health issues.
The thing is, I have absolutely no idea how long she was suffering from a seizure. It looked as if she was in the midst of changing into gym gear when it happened. She checked in shortly after 7:15 am. I just received a text message from my GM and she is now threatening to sue us for her seizure. Can she come after me personally?? As I said, I have no idea how long she was in that state for and I am terrified.
41. A Real Character
A friend of mine is a magistrate, and a guy appeared before the magistrates after attacking an officer. They first watched a video of the event with the guy shouting all sorts of things at the officers. When the court asked him to answer for what he did, he...started to pretend to speak another language. His solicitor just said, "Please forgive my client, he does speak English, however he is an idiot."
After this blatant lie of trying to speak a foreign language that was actually complete and utter nonsense, he then started to pretend that he was deaf and dumb, and started to mimic what he thought was sign language, pointing at his mouth and shaking his head. His solicitor again: "Please forgive my client, he is not deaf and dumb, he is just stupid."
My friend then said to the defendant, "Please take a seat.” He responds "Yeah, no problem, luv."
Unsplash
42. Fighting Like Cats And Dogs
We live in the city limits of Wake county Raleigh NC where there are strict leash laws. Our new neighbors moved in next door about six months ago and have two large Labradors who are let out the back door into the open yards each day and night. One of their dogs is very sweet and well-behaved, while the other is rather aggressive and will charge at people and other dogs.
We have asked them multiple times to walk their dogs on leashes and explained about the city leash laws of our state and county, but they refuse to keep them on leashes. Two months ago, one of their labs charged at myself and my small beagle from across the yard. The next few seconds still make me so angry. The dog’s owner just sat there and watched as I tried to fight off her dog while picking up my beagle.
The dog bit my arm enough to draw blood, and I kicked her dog to get it to stop and back off from its attack. The owner then went into a rage over me doing this and the next day filed a complaint against me. That backfired because they contacted me for my side of the story and ended up charging the neighbor a $250 violation. I didn't file an animal control report because my bite wasn't that bad and I thought the fine would set them straight.
Also, it's not the dog’s fault her owner is an idiot. They continued to let their dogs run free and we have multiple videos of them letting their dogs run free and of the aggressive dog running onto our porch and throwing her body against our glass door, trying to get at our dogs inside our house. Last month, I confronted our neighbor with the multiple videos and told her she needed to walk them on leashes and we were no longer willing to be afraid to use our back porch or walk our dogs anymore.
I told her this was the last time we'd be nicely asking her and next time we'd call animal control. Fast forward to six days ago, when I wokee up to a nightmare. It was the sound of one of my dogs, for lack of better term, screaming. I jumped out of bed and ran into the yard where my sister and one of my beagles were being attacked by her dog. AGAIN.
My sister had curled around our dog and was being repeatedly bitten by the neighbors’ dog. I tackled the neighbors’ dog and (not proud to say as a lifelong animal lover) proceed to grab the dog by her neck and force her to the ground by her neck and shove her head into the ground while practically sitting on the dog to control her.
The neighbor finally got her dog inside. The results were my dog had a huge chunk ripped out of her throat, multiple rips in both ears, six broken teeth on her bottom jaw, a shattered front paw and a broken arm, and multiple bites to her face and rib cage. My dog needed all broken teeth removed, pins in her arm and paw, dozens of stitches, and a skin graft (had no idea they could do this for dogs) to close the hole in her neck.
My sister needed 38 stitches from the bites she received, I ended up with 29 stitches from bites I received, and all three of us are on a plethora of antibiotics and follow-up care including rabies shots for my sister and me because her dog had no current shots. Those shots are not pleasant in any way. Our combined medical/vet bills are 29k with still needing follow-up visits for all of us over the next few months.
My neighbor is refusing to pay anything at all and claims she's not at fault because our yard isn't fenced. She's also claiming she's going to sue us because apparently I broke two of her dog’s ribs when I tackled her to the ground. I cleared out my savings account to make the basic payments to save my dog’s life and don't have any more money to hire a lawyer.
We can hardly afford the co-pays on our insurance to get our rabies treatments and prescriptions filled. I filed to get an advance on my pay but it can take up to two weeks to go through and I was served with a court summons today for injuries to her dog and her pain and suffering from the trauma of her hurt pet. The claim also states that I intentionally caused harm to her pet and used unnecessary force to subdue her pet.
I'm a 4'10 female and my sister is a 4' 8 female. Her dog is almost as big as I am. I really don't know where to start or how to deal with this. I feel like we have a solid case due to the videos and the paperwork from the first time she tried to blame us. I also have messages that span her time as our neighbor via the Nextdoor app where she admits to walking her pets off-leash and her refusal to stop because it's "her house."
With not many other options, we took drastic measures. We each submitted a police report. The officer called animal control and viewed it as a good use of their weekend emergency service because the neighbor did not/could not provide proof of a rabies shot and is viewed as a public health risk and no one can confirm the dog’s aggression isn't attributed to that.
That's probably not the case but city law requires all dogs within city limits to be registered with the city and up to date on all shots. The officer suggested that we take our dogs and cars and leave the neighborhood between 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm or until we receive a follow-up call from animal control. He also suggested we call our homeowners’ insurance after we were done at the station and had a report to give them.
They took photos of our injuries and said we need to take pictures of our dog once we got home. We already took photos of ourselves and dog last night, but they wanted their own to file with the report. We asked about getting a protection or restraining order but he said it would be very hard to do because we'd have the burden of proof showing that she maliciously and intentionally used her dog to harm us.
My boyfriend went out this morning and bought two cameras and a stack of SD cards. He has one set up to look out over our back yard and one looking out to where we park our cars and front porch. This lady is still letting her dogs run out free after the attack and we can get that on video. My sister, dogs, and I are going to spend the night at my boyfriend’s house tonight just so we can stay clear of the crazy neighbor. But we went further than that.
We messaged most of the neighbors on our row and a few of them have had bad experiences and are willing to write statements. The kicker is the family directly behind us has a teenage son who took a VIDEO on his phone of the big attack! The neighbor dog had tried to attack her son’s cat while he was on the back porch once, so when her son heard the yelling he whipped out his phone.
I haven't seen it yet but his mother said they'll gladly turn it over to our lawyer and write statements.
43. Tis The Season
During law school, I was a member of a law clinic. We represented low-income individuals. We handled family law issues, but would try to point clients in the right direction if we could not personally help them. One man came in and stated that he wanted to sue Best Buy. This is not uncommon, but why he wanted to sue Best Buy was…different.
See, this man said he purchased a refurbished computer from Best Buy for his daughter as a Christmas present. Best Buy had then neglected to remove the previous owner's password screen and thus, this man and his daughter were unable to access the computer until they took it back to Best Buy, which was understandably closed on Christmas day.
This, he said, caused his 12-year-old daughter to begin to question the very existence of Santa Claus. He and his daughter then argued the rest of the day, until finally, he admitted to her that there was no Santa Claus. His words were, "Seeing your daughter lose faith in Santa ruined all Christmases to come." He also claimed that now his daughter was "a real witch" since she had lost all faith and stopped believing in Santa Claus.
What was even more interesting is the amount of damages he requested. He stated he believed that Best Buy owed him "at least 25 million" because Christmas was ruined, his daughter will never believe in Santa again, and now he has to deal with her being "a real witch." I did not believe he had any type of recourse against Best Buy for inadvertently demolishing his daughter's belief in Santa.
However, even if I did, our clinic could not help him. I informed him that we only handled family law issues, and he should call the local Bar Association's lawyer referral service. He stated the Bar Association already told him they would not take his case. Then he proceeded to ask if I had children. I told him I did not.
He then proceeded to wish that all my future kids have their belief in Santa Claus ruined. He stated he would not help me if that happened. He then told me to "screw off" and left. Thing is, the whole time he was there and I was talking to him, I was wondering how this guy's daughter believed in Santa Claus until age 12.
44. Squatter’s Rights
I just moved and it was just me and a couple of friends unloading, so we left some things on the street next to the moving truck while we did heavier items like desks, shelves, etc. as a team. I came out after bringing in some more boxes (I had been gone roughly 15 minutes) to find a guy had loaded my couch into the bed of his truck. I ran up to him and explained I own the couch.
He said since it was on the street corner, it’s public property and he’s within his rights to take it. He drove off before I could block his car. I did get his license plate and went to the station make a report, but they asked me if it was in fact on the curb. I said it was, but it was also pretty obviously next to a moving truck, and it was wrapped up and surrounded by boxes.
They didn’t say anything that inspired hope. The couch has been in the family for three generations now and while it probably isn’t worth more than a few hundred bucks, it is sentimentally priceless.
45. Burn It All Down
As a law student, you have the option of doing a lot of low-level pro bono work. I was at a family court as part of a project to help women get restraining orders against their abusers. To look lawyerly, all of us law students dressed up in suits. As it happens, family court tends to be filled with people representing themselves.
Well, anyone dressed in a suit starts attracting all of the people who don't want to deal with the issues themselves, since "Hey, they look like a lawyer." This one gentleman came up to me and my partner, another law student, asking us if we could help him file a restraining order against his girlfriend. When he told us why, I nearly burst out laughing.
She wrote on her Facebook wall that he had a small you-know-what, which he assured us wasn't true. He also wanted to get a restraining order against a different ex-girlfriend because she took some of his clothes and things when they broke up and he wanted them back. He also wanted to get a restraining order against his brother for beating him up when he was a kid. He was in his 30s.
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46. Soup Surprise
I’m currently on vacation visiting family for Christmas. I’m a vegan by choice, but I am also allergic to red meat. I was bitten by a “lone star tick,” which caused me to develop a severe allergy to meat. My family makes fun of me for being vegan, though I cook for myself for all meals and don’t mention it much at all. Anyway, I guess some of my extended family didn’t know the severity of my allergy because my younger cousin chopped up steak (extremely finely I guess) and put it in my butternut squash soup.
Shortly after I ate some of my soup, an awful feeling crept over me. I couldn’t breathe and was breaking out in hives. I woke up in the hospital on Christmas Day, as my mom called an ambulance when she saw my face was swelling. My cousin didn’t say sorry when I started breaking out in hives. He started laughing and told me what he had done.
I woke up to a text from him saying “stop overreacting, you need protein” with a picture of a slaughtered cow. His parents aren’t very well off, but my God do I want to pursue him in court.
47. From Love To Hate
I am a personal injury lawyer in the UK. I took a call from a potential client who had fallen down the stairs in her own home. She had tripped over her own cat as she went down. She told me that she wanted to sue her local authority, as the council owned her home and she was not allowed to keep pets as part of her lease agreement.
She claimed that when the house was inspected, no one told her to get rid of the cat. It was therefore the council's fault that she fell down the stairs. We didn't take the case on.
48. Hold Please
A former Air BnB guest put a hold on my mail for everyone at my address and has been paying to hold the mail for two months. It’s kind of a genius revenge tactic, but the ones who suffered the most are my new renters. One guy has a thyroid problem and had to repurchase $500 in meds. A lot of people missed paychecks or credit cards. One lady missed the receipt of a Death Certificate.
We thought someone was taking the mail from the mailbox at first, but then we started watching the mailman just skip over the house every day and some "test" mail didn't move. So I tried calling the USPS and that got me nowhere. Going down in person was the only way to do this I guess. Turns out, some lady who we'd kicked out for being nasty, attracting bugs, and breaking furniture was mad or something or maybe using my address like a personal PO Box?
Who knows. The post office was really nice about it though and gave me back all my mail. Still, how could this have happened? Surely this can't be legal. I got copies of her hold requests too as proof it was her. She hadn't lived there in two weeks when she put in the first one.
49. Parole Corruption
In the spring of 2018, I was a third-year practicing intern at a public defender's office. As the job entailed, I dealt with a lot of clients who were facing time, but none stuck in my mind the way this one guy did. One day, I looked over the file where the client had three years of probation. I found this very odd due to the initial charge: Possession.
Even so, I go to the docket call and to talk to my client. He's a white male, 30-35-years-old. The first words out of his mouth were "$600." I didn't know what that meant or what was going on. So, I asked him. What I quickly learned was that this client was mentally impaired. During our conversation, he kept bringing up the fact that he didn't do anything, and that he is "paying, paying every month" etc.
And, probably due to my lack of experience, I kept trying to steer him towards the issue: Why did he violate his probation conditions? It didn't even cross my mind that, hold on, maybe he didn't actually do it. I left the cell, talked with the public defender, and told him about the situation. After our conversation, I realized what the client was trying to say.
He had fees of over $2000 and all he had left to pay was $600. If you don't pay, you are in violation of your parole and you have to go back in the slammer. So, in his mind, he thought he was there because he hadn't paid in full. The reality was much worse and different. After a mini investigation, I determined it was the half-way house where he resided.
I contacted the wonderful old woman who "ran it" if you will. She gave me details that this man, although he knew, could not regurgitate and express. Turns out his parole officer was a complete scum bag. He had gone to the half-way house, told our client what a piece of garbage he was, and how he was a total waste of DNA.
He proceeded to go into the kitchen and bring out his service weapon. Then, he ordered my client to go into the back yard and literally dig a grave for himself. All of this was done in front of the old lady. On the day of the case, I called and she immediately came to testify for him. The judge dismissed the case. Found out later, the parole officer was doing this kind of thing to multiple people. He got fired immediately.
50. Clear Out
Tonight when my husband got home from work, he told me devastating news. He informed me that he wants a divorce and will be leaving until it's done. This is not a huge surprise honestly, as ever since our daughter was born we've just not been getting along. What is a surprise is its suddenness. I've been a stay-at-home mom since our daughter was born two years ago, it just didn't make sense to work and spend 90% of what I made on daycare. But worse was to come.
So in talking to him before he was finished packing, he told me, "Good luck with the mortgage and bills, I've taken MY money out of our bank account and turned off your card on MY credit." Again, I would say I was shocked, but I really am not. He's very mean when he's angry and never has seemed to connect with his daughter. He wanted a boy and from the day we got the word we were having a daughter he's been distant.
I obviously need an attorney. I logged into our bank account, and sure enough, it's at $5. I don't see how he can just leave us with nothing all of the sudden, and not enough for me to defend myself.
51. What Money?
I represented this construction worker in a divorce. The wife stayed at home with the kids and had no money. Through entire divorce her attorney claimed that my client was hiding money. They had no evidence and the client vehemently denied it. We had a good settlement in the case and I considered it done. When the client came in a few weeks later to pick his file, he thanked me for my work and said, “And she never did find the money I hid!” He had a big laugh and walked away.
52. Airing The Dirty Laundry
I moved into my apartment at the start of January, and since then I have been convinced that someone was taking my underwear. Every floor has a pair of washer/dryer units, and since moving in I have had almost a dozen different things just disappear from the washer or dryer. The laundry room is so tiny that there is nowhere to sit, aside from sitting on top of one of the machines, so it makes it very hard to wait and see what’s happening.
Two weeks ago, I went and bought a bunch of new things, and when I went to go remove stuff from the washer, I noticed that several things I had just bought went missing. Armed with this and the fact it was early Saturday morning, I went to our landlord and she was able to tell me during the 35 minutes of washing, the only person who entered was my next-door neighbor’s son.
Now at this point, I was furious and confronted the parents. The parents called me a liar, and basically told me off. They absolutely refused to believe me. Yet since confronting them I had nothing go missing for a while. But today I put laundry in and started cleaning my unit. When I went to go drop trash off, I checked the laundry—and witnessed a shocking sight.
I discovered our neighbors’ son, red-handed, going through the dryer I was using. I again confronted the parents, and they immediately started screaming at me for targeting their son, and threatened to call the authorities on me for harassing their son. They also threatened to sue me for "slandering" their son by implying he is a pervert.
53. Showing Off
My mom was a personal injury solicitor, and she was basically trying to prove that the car that hit her client and caused life-changing injuries belonged to this one guy. This guy at first pretends not to live where he does, then the car is found abandoned and all wiped down. The trail seems to end. But my mom gets a hunch that saved the case.
She checks his Facebook profile. He had a public profile, and his profile picture was him standing right next to the car in question. She screenshots the photo and sends it to the opposing counsel with a slightly more politely worded “Your client is a total idiot.” She’s retired now but she considers it to be one of the most satisfying moments of her career.
Needless to say, she won the case and her client got a million-pound settlement and is now living in Spain. All for the want of a simple privacy setting and a touch of common sense.
54. Ring The Alarm
So this past Friday, our entire apartment building was evacuated after a "bum-like person" (landlady's words) broke into the building and busted a gas pipe at around midnight. We COMPLETELY slept through it. I found out about it the next night at work (which is nearby) when my co-worker asked where my boyfriend and I were the night before during the gas leak.
He filled me in on what had happened and that everyone was outside the building, and that there were fire trucks, works.Just afterward, a fire marshal inspected our alarm that's connected to the building and said it needed to be replaced because it doesn’t work. It has yet to be replaced and when my boyfriend confronted our landlady about it via text, she refused to give us a copy of the order for our replacement alarm.
She also blamed us for not hearing the commotion and waking up (I sleep with ear plugs and my boyfriend is a heavy sleeper), didn't apologize, and told us if we don't feel comfortable she'd make arrangements for us to move out. All we asked for was the alarm for our unit. Luckily neither we nor our cats are hurt or anything, but if the gas leak had been any more serious we could've been in trouble.
My boyfriend's dad is a real estate agent and the first thing he cited was the law that landlords need to have an evacuation plan for all tenants and units. I dislike confrontation and feel like we were too harsh in our texts, but c’mon. My dad is telling me to report the landlady to the tenant tribunal or the fire department.
55. This Guy’s Fired Up
I once had a gentleman come to my office wanting to sue his former employer. My office is general civil litigation, and I handle our employment matters. I met with him for about half an hour. He explained that he had been terminated from his employment and believed it to be gender-biased. In my jurisdiction, an employer needs to show a legitimate, non-discriminatory reason for discharge.
While this hurdle can be overcome, it's a high one. I asked him if he had ever been disciplined, cited, or written up in the past. I wanted to establish if the employer would be able to say he was an unfit worker. If he had an unblemished record, our job is easier. He said yes, he had been written up. Not only that, he said it had happened 12 times. In two years.
I finished the interview, thanked him for his interest in our business, but told him we would not be able to take the case.
56. The Cat’s Out Of The Bag
I went out of town for five days and a co-worker offered to check on my four cats while I was away. I came home to find they had no food or water and their litter box hadn't been cleaned in days. My oldest girl was in really bad shape, and she couldn't move her back legs at all. I thought she just fell down the stairs and broke her back.
I took her to the ICU and the doctor ran a lot of tests. They revealed my worst nightmare. The doctor explained to me that nothing was broken. She was actually extremely dehydrated, likely due to not having access to water in days. This caused a previously unknown/undiagnosed diabetic episode, which sent her into shock. She suffered for two days in the ICU before the doctor told me she was only getting worse and a decision had to be made.
There was nothing they could do and she was terrified and suffering. I stayed by her side as they euthanized her. That was about three days ago. My heart is in pieces. There is no signed document of my friend agreeing to watch my cats, but I have text messages of when I tried to check in on them, then 42 messages in the morning and another four hours worth of messages from this friend trying to blame me for not reminding her and not telling her about an undiagnosed condition, and even blaming me for trusting her.
I know I'm angry and grieving. But because of what this person did, my cat suffered for days until I had to let her go. I want to take her to court.
57. Relapse Regrets
I do family law. I once represented a father who had lost almost all custody of his kids because he'd had issues with illicit substances and had spent time behind bars. He came to me saying he had been clean for nine months and had his life together. He seemed so sincere in wanting to get a full relationship with his son. Meanwhile, the other side fought viciously to keep him away. After a long trial, we prevailed and my client got fairly frequent unsupervised partial custody.
Only about three months after the case, everything unraveled. The father was back doing drugs and selling all his stuff for more money. But for me the most soul-crushing thing is that he set up a fake GoFundMe stuff for his child's "cancer." His child didn't have cancer and has never had cancer, so you know where that money was going.
I withdrew from the case at this point so I don't know what happened afterward, but I imagine and hope his custody was taken away. Basically, the net result of winning the case was that the poor boy had to witness his father relapse and then get exploited by his own dad for money. Definitely the worst case I ever won.
58. Nuts To That
My son’s school is completely ignoring his allergy to peanuts. This has been an ongoing issue since the second day of school, where he was given peanut butter crackers. We sort of brushed it off as a new school year, new students, teachers a bit frazzled dealing with first graders, no real big deal. His allergy isn't really severe but still not fun to deal with and can potentially become life-threatening.
We had already informed the school of his allergy before the year started and even talked directly to the teacher about it because the default snack during the day if no other parents brought in a snack is peanut butter crackers. We even offered to purchase a special alternative for him, but they said it was unnecessary as they have other alternatives.
So we figured the issue was over…when a few weeks later it happened again. This time they claimed he grabbed another student’s snack and ran off to eat it before they could stop him. Now, my little one can be a little bit of a hard-head and I can potentially see this happening, so again we talked to him about peanuts and how dangerous they are to him.
He continued to adamantly deny doing that and said Mrs. gave them to him. We then decide a meeting with the principal is in order, not to blame the teacher or accuse her of lying but to hopefully get this under control. Again a few weeks of no more issues, then it happened again. When I heard their story, I was immediately suspicious.
Once again the story is "he grabbed it and ran off and ate the whole package before we caught him." Okay, so a six-year-old managed to grab an unopened package of crackers, elude a teacher and an aide, and eat the whole package before he's caught? Twice? He's crying and swearing to us he was given them, and after so many incidents we have to start believing him.
Another meeting with the principal and teacher gives us a "Do not worry! This won't happen again." We have another long sit down with our son to explain that even if it's given to you, ask to make sure it doesn't have peanuts or other nuts in it. Then, the very next school day (the meeting was on Friday) he's given another snack of peanut butter crackers, but this time he asks if there is nuts in it and THEN he's given the alternative.
We figure it kind of sucks that the kid has to be the adult right here but at the end of the day he's learning to ask about nuts. We send an email to the principal detailing the issue and say that the next stop is the school board if he is given peanuts again. We get a response back: "If he's asking now, what's the problem? He should have known to ask to begin with. We are teachers not parents."
We had no issues for a while until this week. Some parent brought in PB&J sandwiches for snack time and he was given one. He forgot to ask about nuts but thought "it was only in the crackers." But that's not all. We find out the parent WAS aware of a nut allergy in the class (it's on the parent snack sheet) and brought in just a jelly one that was made separate from the peanut butter ones.
He was not given this one. We spent a day at the hospital. We've had endless talks with him about nuts and do our best to teach him, but some of the blame has to be on the teachers here, right? Do schools not have an obligation to deal with allergies? The school lunch seems to have zero issues with this and has never given him a nut when there are several things on the menu rotation that contain them. He gets a special tray that was nowhere near any nuts.
59. Scot Free
I have been a defense lawyer for 30 years. I have tried over 100 violent cases and 20 capital cases, but here's the one that stuck with me. I had a case very early in my career where I defended a man who was being accused of ending a young man's life. In the end, the jury was hung and my client was acquitted at his second trial. I was doing my job, but I had this suspicion that my client's story wasn't completely honest.
As we left the courthouse, he was walking one way, and I another. I yelled back and asked, “ You shot that guy didn’t you?” He said, “Yep!” and laughed. I have never asked a client if they were actually guilty since hearing that man's laugh. It bothered me for quite a while.
60. Absent Mom
I will probably consult with a lawyer in the near future. I have a daughter (13) with an ex who was not in her life. We were young, in our early 20s, when she was born. My ex wasn't ready to give up her life and be a mom yet, so I assumed full custody. She had another child when our daughter was nine and never spoke to our daughter again or really acknowledged her.
I remarried as well and my wife has been an amazing stepmom to my daughter. My daughter was diagnosed with cancer in 2016. I made sure to let my ex know of course and sent periodic updates. She didn't visit or call and basically, things went on as normal. In December 2019, it became apparent that her fight was drawing to a close and there was nothing anyone could do.
I sent the following email: "Jess, I want to let you know that we got the results of E's scan today. The cancer has spread significantly with several new growths and no change to the old sites. At this time, doctors are advising that treatment is unlikely to be successful and we would be better off providing her with comfort care instead.
She will be a lot more comfortable and be allowed to go home, which she really wants. L, the doctors, and I have all talked to her as well as child life. She has agreed that it's time to come home. She is being discharged tomorrow to hospice at home. As always, she would love to see/hear from you." She replied to that email a short time later with "Thank you for the update."
She didn't call or reach out to our daughter at all. After coming home from the hospital, my daughter asked me to mail a letter and to send an email she'd written to her mother. I don't know what the letter or email said but I know that neither one was replied to. In January, our daughter passed. I sent the following emails: "Jess, I wish I didn't have to write this email. Our sweet E passed her sleep. It was very peaceful. I will send another email with funeral details. Don't hesitate to reach out if you need anything."
And then I sent one about the funeral. This is the important part of that email: "Jess, In addition, we have decided on cremation. Please let me know if you would like any of her ashes. I can even get them made into jewelry or put in an urn for you and have it shipped if that's easier for you." She replied to that one thanking me and telling me she would rather not have the ashes and that I could do what I liked with them.
We did. We gave some to my mother, had some turned into jewelry for my wife and three younger girls, I kept some, and we buried some in a few of her favorite places. At this point, the only ashes that physically exist are mine, my mother's, and my wife and daughters'. Fast forward to the end of February, and I get an email from my ex stating that she'd had a change of heart and asking if she could have some of our daughter's ashes.
I told her that unfortunately, we didn't have any "left,” but that my wife offered to send her the necklace she had made. She declined and did seem a little offended that we'd offered but it was all we had to give. A few days ago, I received a notice that she was suing me for emotional damages for "failing to offer her our shared child's cremains" and "offering a used necklace" and some other nonsense.
I'm going to be honest: I feel like the only person who is being emotionally damaged here is me. I'm dealing with a huge devastating loss of my first child, my best buddy, my constant companion while also dealing with the stress of two young kids who don't understand AND a brand new baby. I feel like I've been nothing but nice and communicative to her and this is what I get for it?
I'm angry, I'm tired, and I'm frustrated. Realistically, I don't even have the emotional energy to fight it and I'm seriously considering throwing some money at it and hoping it goes away.
61. No Prosecution
One time, I represented this client first when he was a juvenile charged with disorderly conduct at school for fighting, then when he became an adult, it was for simple things like possession. As he got older, it became easier and easier to figure out what parts of his life hadn’t gone well. Over the years, I tried to counsel him and push him to better himself.
When he got his high school diploma, he started going to Narcotics Anonymous, started classes at a community college, and found a part-time job. Then, on the night of his 21st birthday, he was charged with driving while impaired. Of course, I take on this case for him. But about 6 months later, when we're supposed to be in court, my client doesn't show up. At this point in his life, this was highly unusual.
As I’m trying to figure out where he is, the court starts going over Arraignments and First Appearances. Lo and behold, three people are up for murder charges. The prosecution starts to tell the judge about the facts of the case. During his speech, he mentions the victims' names. That's when I felt my stomach drop. One of the victims was my client.
Apparently, my client was at a party when these three individuals decided to allegedly do a drive by shooting. My client suffered multiple wounds and didn’t make it to the hospital. So...by default, as you can’t prosecute someone who isn't alive. Thus the State has to take a dismissal which means that technically I won my case.
Either way, it was crushing. My client was finally turning his life around...only to pass before he could enjoy it.
62. One Weird Morning
This has been a really weird morning. I have a five-year-old who stays with me during the weekends. He sleeps all night without any issues, except for the very rare nightmare or sleep talking. Last night, he was the happiest little kid in the world because we put up our Christmas tree. I put him to bed around 9 pm and watched some movies with my fiancée, who lives with me.
Around 3 am, I got sleepy and went to join her in bed. She gets up around 4:30 am to go to work and leaves around 5 am. At 6:30 am, I am awoken by a single low knocking sound. I get up, all sleepy, thinking it’s my kid jumping on the bed. As I exit my room, my heart nearly stopped. I am greeted by four officers staring me down across the hallway.
I don’t immediately register what is going on and wonder if I should serve them a drink. One officer asks me who I am, to which I reply with my full name and ask what is going on. He continues his interrogation, asking if I live with a woman. Fear slowly starts to creep up to me, because I start thinking she was in an accident. I answer that I live with my girlfriend.
The officer asks me if I have a son, to which I reply yes. He asks me where he is. At this point, I lean over the wall and I see my door busted open. I am thinking someone hurt my fiancée and took my kid, so I look at the office, turn, and head down the corridor to his room. I slowly open it, fearing the worst. I see my son in bed, still tucked in and looking at me as if nothing happened.
I come back down the hallway and tell the officer, "He is there, what is going on!?" They tell me to step out into the dining room. I put my hands up as I walk past them. Two officers walk into my room and check inside. I sit at the table and the officer sits next to me as another watches over us. I look to the door and there’s the lady that guards the complex I live in with another lady I have never seen before just peeking into my home.
The officer questioning me tells me someone heard a child crying and called the authorities. He says they got there at 5 am, which would mean they got there just as my fiancée left for work. He claims they called at my door for an hour and a half and no one answered, then they heard “detonations” inside and decided to storm in. They never went outside my window to call me, which would have done the trick.
My apartment has weird acoustics and I cannot hear knocking in the living room from my room. He asks me why I didn’t hear him and I told him I must have been deeply asleep. He asks if I am under the influence and I say I just went to bed late. The officer gives me a case number and tells me to give that to administration so they can fix the door, and they leave.
As the officers leave, I could hear them talking with one of the ladies, who was saying the child was crying too hard for it to be nothing. The cop told her there was no evidence of wrongdoing, and she just couldn’t believe it. I asked my son if he was crying and he said yes. I asked him why, and his reply was totally nonsensical. He said the fan stopped working...
So now I am sitting in an apartment with my son and a broken front door. I fear when I go outside I'll be judged by my neighbors as the child-beater or worse. I have been trying to understand the timeline of events. I went to bed at 3 am and my fiancée got up at 4:30, then left at 5. If the officers got there at 5 am as they claim, then the call must have happened around 3:00-4:30.
My son must have stopped crying before my fiancée got up and didn’t resume his crying for the rest of the night. The officers get here at 5 and hang outside my door until 6:30 when they hear the "detonations," NOT a crying child. My son had no signs of having been crying and he even stood next to me on his own during the questioning. What the heck?
63. Memories Are Worth More Than Plastic
This happened during the course of the divorce. Neither side would follow the court orders. When they had to go back to court, they were fighting over a pistol and the man's grandmother's bowls. I assumed for weeks that these bowls were some sort of heirloom or expensive china. I was so wrong. When they finally brought the bowls in to swap, they were freaking Tupperware.
64. It’s My House Now
My girlfriend and I rushed into moving in together, and after two weeks of living together we realized it wasn't going to work. She agreed to move out by the end of February...but now she refuses to leave. I have one bedroom in my apartment, and I am tired of sleeping on my couch. But wait, it gets worse. Lately, she has started denying me entry into my own unit.
She uses the deadbolt on the inside and pretends to not hear me. Last night when I came home around 11 pm, I discovered I couldn't get into my apartment as she had bolted it. After pounding and calling for an hour, she started screaming at me to go away. I ended up calling the authorities, who after talking to her briefly told me to go find somewhere else to stay for the night and said I needed to leave.
I slept all of last night in my car. This morning, after she left for work, I removed the deadbolt from my door. Oh, and the piece de resistance. I also discovered a complete and utter stranger sleeping in my living room, along with another girl passed out in my bed. After I kicked them out, my ex came home and told me I have no right to kick out her guests.
She called the authorities again and the officer said it was a civil issue. Tonight I have a late shift again, and I guarantee you the same thing is going to happen. What am I supposed to do?
65. Brain Matter
I came into law school with a very clear moral compass. I knew what I wanted to do (defense) and I had very strong feelings about capital punishment. I thought there was never a situation that warranted it. Cut to me working in my school’s Capital Punishment clinic. The way the clinic worked, was that you'd typically be assigned 1-2 clients, review their case, visit them, and do research at the discretion of the supervising attorneys. I had one client, and his case will haunt me for the rest of my life.
He goes in for life after a really brutal assault on a teenager during a burglary... and proceeds to move to more and more secure facilities after numerous attacks on guards and an escape attempt. But that wasn't what got him capital punishment. See, while my guy was in supermax, he managed to slip his cuffs, beat a guard lifeless with a metal bar, and throw his battered corpse down the stairs.
All of this is on video. There's no question he did it. So, the jury deliberates for like a day before they give him the long goodbye. By the time I get the case, it's about reviewing his eligibility for capital punishment. So, I dig into his case file for the testimony that appeared at trial and there's all this stuff about huge problems with his cognitive ability and like his actual brain structure.
With the supervising lawyer's okay, I do a little independent research, consolidate all the different testimony and map it onto a brain. The conclusion I come to is pretty simple but completely shocking. This guy has less than half a brain. Through a combination of substance use, a rough upbringing, and birth defects, roughly half of my client's brain just is not present anymore in any meaningful way.
Including all the centers that regulate hormone production, fight or flight response, and threat assessment. I find a bunch of medical reports where people with just some of these conditions get severe behavior imbalances, and in at least one case psychotic episodes. Basically, I help establish that this guy has the kind of diminished capacity that makes him ineligible for Capital Punishment under Atkins.
If he's successful on an Atkins claim, then he is structurally ineligible for capital punishment. But, do I feel good about helping to probably save this guy’s life? Heck no. Because it means he's going to be in a supermax forever and he's already shown that he can harm people in a supermax. If he doesn't get the chair, he'll still be in prison for life, and I can almost guarantee that he will injure (or worse) another guard during that time, probably multiple ones.
BUT if he's executed, we're executing someone who really isn't meaningfully responsible for their actions because most of their brain is gone. He never had the option to make the right decision, or make any decision, because of his incredibly extensive brain damage. It's out of my hands now, but they are appealing so it's going to go before the court eventually.
I drank a lot that semester, and I'll never do capital punishment work again.
66. Back To The Wall
Three nights ago, my parents and I got in a huge fight. I am not a Christian, while they are extreme bible thumpers. I am bisexual, and they believe I'm going to be burning in hell. I was forced to come out of the closet due to blackmail reasons, and my parents promptly kicked me out. I managed to get my dogs and my keys, took my car, and left.
We just moved to this state so I have no friends. My siblings all have the same beliefs as my parents. My related family is all thousands of miles away. Last night, my parents cut off my phone plan and told me they're kicking me off of their insurance. Right now I am on my own with my two large dogs, a pit bull and an American bulldog, sleeping in my car.
My parents forced me to quit my job last week so I could focus more on school. Last night I checked my bank account. My parents drained the 1k savings I had in it. It is completely empty. I'm just scared and don't know where to turn. I primarily want to be able to take care of my dogs. I do not want to give them up but I'm not sure how much longer I can without neglecting them.
67. Axis Of Evil
My dad was a lawyer in California, and this husband and wife were getting a divorce. Everything went normal, but then the husband requested partial custody. This was fine…except for the fact that they had no children. No, the husband wanted partial custody of the dog. The jurisdiction is that pets are personal property, so this couldn't be arranged in the first place, but my dad had to wonder why the heck this guy wanted partial custody of a pet.
"Does the pet mean that much to you?" He asked. "No, it's that we both like the dog, so she'll have custody and like it, but when I get custody, I'm gonna take it to the vet and have it put down." That’s 101 on what you don't say to your defense lawyer.
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68. No Visitors Allowed
My sister and I have a strained relationship with our mother and have not had contact with her for months. Our mother took it upon herself to show up to my niece's school to have lunch with her and brought her a slushy to drink, without my sister's knowledge or permission. My niece told my sister about it when she got home. My sister called the school and come to find out, our mother is not on the list at all for anything.
So they allowed a stranger into the school and allowed this person to give a drink to a five-year-old all without my sister's knowledge. The principal is calling my sister later and so far they are trying to make it seem like it's not a big deal, but we feel differently. The only thing I can think for her to do is maybe call the school board. They risked my niece's safety and I think they need to realize the gravity of the situation.
69. Little Caesar’s Downfall
When I was in law school, I clerked with a solo practitioner. Our client wanted to go to trial over a charge of impersonating an officer. What happened that led up to this? Well...One night, our client got drunk and ordered a pizza for delivery. Now, I've been there before, and it can be frustrating to wait forever for that glorious, delicious pizza.
So this guy came up with an “ingenious” plan. To speed things up for himself, he called the pizza place back and told them he was an officer, and if they don't hurry it up there would be trouble. However, as it turns out, the guy who answered the phone at the pizza joint was a volunteer firefighter, and asked for our client's name because he knew all the officers in that town.
When our client gave him his real name (not smart), and inevitably it turned out that he was not, in fact, an officer, a small investigation led to him being charged. Before trial, our client wanted us to argue he had a First Amendment right to tell people he was an officer. He doesn’t. He ended up pleading out, but that case stood out in my mind.
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70. Bait And Switch
So I put a gaming computer on layaway with Walmart a few weeks ago so I could make payments versus $1,000+ at once. I finally paid it off brought it home, and the motherboard was cracked. So I returned it, and unfortunately, they said that amount was too much for a gift card (as I was going to immediately buy a new one) but since my mom has a Walmart debit card they said it would be available to me immediately.
Well, it immediately locked her account for fraud, so we called the Walmart money people and they said all we needed to do was submit the receipt as proof. We did and called back and the lady said that the receipt wasn’t good enough?? She said that it had a “different balance” on all the receipts but that’s because it was layaway and I made payments!
She told my mother the account may never be unlocked as we did not have sufficient proof? I’m totally distraught, I’m a college student and I don’t have extra funds and this was something I worked hard for.
71. Daddy’s Little Secrets
I work for a small but really old firm in Texas, and I work with a few attorneys who handle estate planning and wills. This man was a doctor. He passed on. He was worth about $2,000,000. He wasn't very wealthy, and we also handled a lot of bigger cases. However, he had five kids and an ex-wife. When he divorced years before, he came out as gay and moved in with his partner.
After he passed, his will stated that his house and money would go to this partner. His kids tried to argue it, and we ended up going through mediation. As kind of a whackadoodle move, his partner actually requested a paternity test on the father’s frozen specimen to see if the kids really had any claim at all to the estate. Well…
It took a lot of pull to do it, but in the end...It turns out all five kids were not actually related to the now-deceased father. The partner got to keep the entire estate.
72. You’re Not In Good Hands
I just started work for the first time since having my daughter two years ago. I left her at a daycare with a group size of 11 and three care providers. On the second day, I got the shock of my life. I was driving and saw her walking down the street several blocks from the daycare with a woman I had never seen before, truly never.
I jumped out and asked what was going on, and the woman said she’d found my daughter a block away walking in the middle of the road. She said was taking her to the station—I have no reason to doubt the woman’s intentions because there was a station on this road. I drove my daughter back to the daycare and the caregivers were unaware she was even missing.
I was in such a state of shock and panic thinking of everything that could have happened to my daughter if she had not been discovered by a Good Samaritan. I just calmly asked questions, gathered information, wrote it all down, and sent it in an email to the owner to get a timestamp and confirmation of the events, as well as notify them we would be withdrawing her.
This occurred last week and I have yet to receive a response from them, despite the seriousness of the situation. I would like to know if I can take action against them for endangering my daughter and if I can alert the other parents as to what occurred so they can keep their little ones safe, without opening myself up to slander charges.
73. Exhibitionist A
My client was charged with harassment for sending risqué photos and videos of himself to his ex-wife. The client swore to me, in private, that it was baseless and that his wife was lying. He never sent photos like that in his life. Then my office received a folder for discovery from the other side. Its contents were astonishing.
It’s filled with photos of my client's nether parts. Not only that, it was full body shots, with his face in frame. Sometimes, my client was wearing a baseball cap, sometimes he was wearing sunglasses, but without fail, he was never wearing clothing. I had to yell at him because it was an unbelievably flagrant lie to me. I told him he needed to trust me as his attorney.
After this confrontation, he only asked one question: "How many people saw me?" My answer was, "It should have been three or four. It was probably closer to 50."
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74. Think Of The Children
I get my daughter every other weekend. She’s nine years old and her mother bought her a cell phone, obviously to keep tabs on my daughter. This weekend, we were watching a movie when I got a text from my ex-wife asking to speak to my daughter. Now, I don’t attach myself to my phone (unless I’m working) and I got the text about 30 minutes after it came through.
When I saw it, I told my daughter that her mom wants to speak to her and I also texted my ex, saying that we were watching a movie but that I told our daughter that she wants to talk. The movie ended around 9:10 pm and I had my daughter go shower/brush teeth/go to bed. I told her I’d be up to tuck her in. I went into my daughter's room at about 9:40 and she was on the phone with her mother.
Her mother was SCREAMING into the phone “YOU TELL HIM SCREW YOU!” I took the phone from my daughter and I said to my ex-wife that she was acting very inappropriately and that if she has a problem with me she should bring it up with me, not our daughter. She yelled at me about not allowing our daughter to use her phone, which isn’t true at all.
I asked her to calm down and to keep in mind the effect her words are having on our daughter. My ex was furious and was breathing heavily, obviously biting her tongue. I handed the phone back to my daughter, and said loudly enough for my ex-wife to hear “Daddy is going to leave the room now, please don’t stay on the phone long, it’s way past your bedtime.”
I had to get my stepson to bed anyway. I walked by my daughter’s room maybe 10/15 minutes later and she’s repeating “I’m sorry” into the phone. I fought my instinct to take that phone away because of the torment my daughter was experiencing. I walked downstairs to do some chores and distract myself from my anger. It wasn’t until 10:50 that my daughter came downstairs. She had obviously been crying and was exhausted.
I sat with her in her room, prayed with her, and tried to talk to her about what happened. She was really upset and wouldn’t speak much. I hugged her. My daughter told me there were 11 missed calls from her mother and that her mother said she was just worried about her. I’m sick of my limited time with my daughter being questioned. Divorce is hard enough on children, and I think my ex-wife is making it a lot harder on my daughter than it needs to be.
75. The Doghouse Becomes His Revenge
My uncle represented this guy getting a divorce from his wife of 15 years. Super toxic breakup, and they split everything 50/50, even the land that the house they lived in sat upon. Well, she decides to build a house right behind the other house. Mind you, this was a lot of land. There was probably 200 yards separating both home sites, and the backs of the houses faced each other.
The house gets built, and my uncle gets a call from his client asking about the situation he had gotten himself into. Apparently, his ex-wife would spend a lot of time in her backyard, so he saw her all the time. What he did was buy a female dog and name it the same name as his ex-wife. Anytime he would let his dog back in from letting her out, he would yell "Susan, you b****! Get in here!"
He would also yell if she was peeing on the flowers, "Susan you b****! Quit pissing on the flowers!" or "Susan, you b****! Quit digging in the dirt!" The ex-wife called the authorities on him a couple of times, but there was nothing they could do because the dog was registered under the name of Susan, and it was literally a b****, so there you go.
76. A Work Of Art
My boyfriend’s sister-in-law mistreated and over-medicated her autistic child, so I called Child Protective services on her months ago. I was living up there near his family and long story short, when I drove home for the holidays, it was just supposed to be a short trip but all hell broke loose and my boyfriend quickly packed everything we owned and followed me down a few days later.
However, he forgot this one painting that has been in the family for over 100 years that my grandfather gave to me before he passed 14 years ago. Well, my sister-in-law and her husband then sent me a video. Its contents made me rage. It was them setting the painting on fire and saying, “this is for calling CPS, witch.” They’re both clearly seen in the video and called it a priceless painting.
This was literally my most prized possession and my heart is in so many pieces because my grandfather gave it to me so long ago. I would give everything I own just to get it back.
77. Permanently Leaving The Neighborhood
I had a client who was the cleanest cut of the clean. Think of the nicest, most innocent, stable guy you can think of (I only take clients based on their initial few weeks of behavior and background check). He was basically Mr. Rodgers. No record, same company for 20 years, great character references that were proven.
Then the client went and got not one but two DUIs and an assault charge. Then he committed suicide. I know he didn't want me to get stuck with no money and hordes of paperwork. I think I'm a nice guy. But sometimes I wonder.
78. Fight Fire With Fire
I have been accused of a litany of perversions, some against children, because of the way I dress. My neighbor is so adamant about all of this she's got me a bit worried. About a month ago, I moved in with my sister and her boyfriend into a neighborhood that's mostly families. I didn't expect any trouble. My first introduction to this woman, let's call her Karen, was my first week here.
I went to check the mail and I wasn't wearing a bra. I had on a baggy t shirt and basketball shorts, though. Karen is one of those Southern women who spend all day in their yards, pretending to garden, but are really spying on their neighbors. You know the type. She waved at me and I waved back, trying to be pleasant. She came at me, I thought to make a proper introduction, or whatever, but she started lecturing me about not having on a bra.
It was creepy and weird. I am not at all well-endowed, I go without frequently and so far, no one seems to pick up on it, but not Karen. Karen urged me to think of her children and Jesus, who was always watching, and my parents (bless their hearts) she knows they raised me better than this. It was so goddarn weird, I felt like laughing in her face, but I didn't want there to be any issues so I said I'd be more diligent in the future and Karen went about her business.
Well, wearing a bra wasn't good enough for Karen, y'all, oh no. Not only is blasting my nips lewd, so are regular women's shorts and any form-fitting type of bottoms even if they cover my sinful legs. Karen seems to have an issue with the lower half of my body. While my breasts are small and humble, I am "aesthetic" from the waist down.
The second time Karen confronted me, her brood was playing in the street, and any semblance of pleasantness was gone. She threatened to call the authorities on me for indecent exposure in front of her children, insinuated I got off on arousing her tween boys, called me a hussy, a Jezebel, and said that I needed Jesus. Because I was wearing jean shorts.
We live in a nice area, lots of woods, by lakes and parks and I like to go out for walks, but it seems every time I step foot out of my door, there’s Karen making snide remarks or gossiping with other bored housewives. It's getting annoying. So I got my revenge. I got dressed up in my skimpiest daisy dukes that barely cover my butt and give me legit camel toe, plus I wore a half shirt with no bra on and my abs exposed to check the mail (I do not regularly dress like this).
I must have been quite a sight to Karen, who immediately stormed over once she spotted me, nearly knocking over her lawn chair she stood up so fast. She started laying into me. I just stood there letting her bump her gums for a minute, then I said, "You can stop the games, Karen. I see the way you look at me, I know you want me."
Her face went beet red and she stammered out, "I'll pray for you." Then scurried away. Actually went inside her house.
79. You Get What You Pay For
This guy was a super smart engineer, but he fell for a woman who was just white trash. He married her, and at the time of the divorce, they had two kids aged six and four. One day, she told him she wanted a divorce and wanted him to move out. It was a huge house in a gated community, so I advised him to just move to another part of the house so he could be near his kids. But I knew something he didn’t know.
See, the reason she wanted him out of the house was so that she could have the man she was cheating on him with move in. I’d seen it before, and I was pretty sure it was the case here. He didn’t believe she was cheating, though, so I told him to go to the gate and check the logs. Sure enough, my client left every morning at 6:30 am for work.
Then around 7:30 am, three to five times a week, another man would check in at the gate and say he was headed to my client's house. I dug into the name, and it was my client's wife's ex-boyfriend, who was fresh off an eight-year stint behind bars. My client confronted his wife and recorded it. Her response was bone-chilling.
She basically admitted to cheating, then told my client she wanted to move her lover in, and if my client did not move out, she would make their children's lives miserable and make sure they know it was because daddy is being selfish. She lawyered up after that, and we played the tape for her attorney in the first conference.
He made some noise about consent and it not sounding like her, but he knew he was done for. In the end, my guy got the house, full custody, and the bank accounts. She got one car, her clothes, and jewelry (which were very valuable), some of the household items, and $25,000 cash. She literally moved from a palatial home in a gated neighborhood in the nicest part of town into a trailer in an unincorporated part of the county. Don't marry trash.
80. Water Under The Bridge
My girlfriend is a type-1 diabetic and has a heart condition called dysautonomia where her doctor requires her to drink above 120 ounces of water a day. Sometimes she can get dizzy and fall over, however only for a couple of seconds. My girlfriend isn't a quitter, she is very outgoing and won't use her conditions in the wrong way. She's also only 16. But one day, she got a phone call from her manager explaining that she will most likely be fired.
She told her that she should be able to go four hours without water and said she isn't entitled to water while working. She's job hunting now and quitting soon.
81. A Misplaced Identification
When I was in law school, I clerked for a defense clinic. We had an assault and battery case where there was only one witness to the incident: the victim. I was sitting at the defense table with the actual attorney, another law student that worked on the case with me, and the defendant. We were all in similar looking suits as a matter of unplanned coincidence.
The victim was asked to identify the person who committed the assault in court and she pointed to me and not the defendant. Our attorney asked several times if she was really pointing to me and if she was sure, and she said yes. The prosecutor was visibly upset and the trial pretty much ended there as this was a bench trial and not with a jury.
It was never discussed or admitted to, but I suspect our attorney purposefully had me there at the trial because I did have a passing resemblance of the defendant.
82. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
I was eating at a diner with some friends at 3 am, and the guy in the booth next to us started coughing and gagging. I realized he was choking and went to help him, since I had Heimlich training at my place of work. The guy managed to get the thing out and it flew across the booth. He looked really angry, paid his bill, and left. I felt like a little hero the rest of the dinner and then just kind of forgot about it. Until the most ridiculous thing happened.
Today I got a letter from a lawyer saying that I’m getting sued for battery. They said I bruised a rib when I did this. I have no clue how this guy figured out who I am. I thought I helped the guy seeing as he probably would have choked without help.
83. Hijinks Ensue
My brother, fresh out of law school, was asked to defend this fraternity being sued for defecating in the dorm room of a pledge who did not finish his bid to be a brother. My brother called the co-defendants and the plaintiff the "Poopers" and the "Poopee" respectively in our group text.
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84. Heart-Stopping Problem
I should first and foremost say that this happened about 10 years ago, so at this point, I doubt it's possible to do anything about the situation. When I was 16, my mom was driving me to a friend's house when her defibrillator started shocking her repeatedly every few seconds. She thought it was just doing its job, until the shocking continued where it surpassed 40 shocks at 600 volts.
This led to severe heart damage and required multiple open-heart surgeries to fix. It turned out that the wires that connected to her box malfunctioned and were sending signals that her heartbeat was off. It could be some form of PTSD I suffered from seeing my mom nearly die in my arms, but her defibrillator almost triggered again today and it brought back those memories.
She told me that her and my dad tried to pinpoint who was responsible (the company who made the wires, the defibrillator company, etc.) but all of the doctors she saw denied responsibility. I feel like she suffered so much and was given absolutely zero compensation for what happened. It makes me furious knowing how much pain she went through and nothing was done about it.
85. A Family Affair
I am an attorney practicing estate planning and wills and trust. Not a week goes by that I don't hear a story about a family squabbling over an inheritance, but there was this one guy in particular. He had an aunt who was a lesbian and had recently married her lifelong partner. His aunt passed shortly after they were finally allowed to be married.
Like many couples, they had a trust together and, as you would imagine, it left everything to the surviving spouse. Only when both of them passed was it divided between other friends and relatives. The nephew was left with a fairly generous gift once both his aunt and her surviving wife passed. Well, apparently that wasn't good enough for him.
He wanted to sue his aunt's widow to get his inheritance that he was "entitled" to now. I explained that wasn't really possible, since the trust was very clear and it wasn't like his aunt left everything to her spouse under duress or anything like that. Also, the spouse had complete authority to change the trust and could theoretically cut him out of the trust entirely if she chose to.
There is something that happens when you tell people something contrary to what they want to hear. When you give someone advice that conflicts with how they believe the world works, they get upset, flustered, and more entrenched in their position. They will ask the same question multiple ways just to try to get you to tell them the answer they want to hear.
So he kept asking different ways he could sue to get his inheritance, and I kept telling him that he would mostly likely lose the case and then not receive anything, ever. Finally, he asked, "So what can I do?" My actual, legitimate advice: "You can be really, really nice to your aunt's wife." He stormed out of my office without saying a word.
That was a first for me. His mother was there for the entire meeting and apologized for his behavior, saying, "He's upset, he was really close to his aunt." Right, sure. It was absolutely clear where he developed his sense of entitlement.
86. Sticky Situation
I currently have a restraining order against me, and turns out the girl who has the restraining order against me just got hired at the company I work for. I know this because I’ve seen her in the lobby of the building. She has told me that if I don’t leave the job she will call the authorities on me. I probably won’t be able to get another job at this time, especially with my background.
87. The Bad Neighbors
These people wanted to sue their neighbor after having her house burned down because the fire spread to their house and they needed to do…a roof repair. The catch? Said neighbor passed in the fire. Their argument was that her behavior of taking homeless people into her house to give them a meal and some clothes was recklessly negligent. Thankfully, I was working defense on that case.
I think they just wanted some insurance settlement money, but we took it all the way and they took our offer to settle for nothing the week before trial.
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88. Going Above And Beyond
My wife had surgery recently to remove a kidney stone. While she was in surgery, the doctor noticed a small buildup of scar tissue related to the childbirth she had a few months before. He called in a gynecologist and she removed the scar tissue. This was explained to me after her surgery was over, while she was in the recovery room. But this was actually very bad news.
Insurance covered the kidney stone removal but did not cover the removal of scar tissue. The bill for that procedure by itself is $4,000. That procedure was never in the scope of the original surgery, neither of us consented to having it done, and it was not medically necessary or related to the kidney stone removal. Do we have a case to make this $4,000 go away?
89. A Bird’s Eye View Of Terror
I represent school districts. One of my clients has a farm that is used to teach agricultural science to the students. The manager of the farm once decided to brutally euthanize a whole bunch of chickens in full view of a group of elementary school students. Sometimes, farms have to euthanize chickens. We understand, and that in and of itself was not the problem.
The problem was that he was whacking the chickens over the head with a hammer. And, to make matters worse, he had decided to whack each chicken like five or six times before they were done in, because he is apparently some kind of psychopath. The poor chickens were NOT dying from this. That didn’t deter him from continuing.
If one of them refused to die, he’d just toss the chicken on the ground and try again with another one. But the birds were all getting horrifically damaged and injured, so they were just flapping in circles on the ground, or walking with terrible, stuttering limps, or screaming in pain. One of the kids recorded the whole thing and wow was it awful to watch!
Obviously, I recommended that the school district fire him immediately because his behavior was completely unacceptable. He then tried to sue us. For GENDER DISCRIMINATION. That case was practically over before it began…
90. Car Trouble
I recently came back from college and I couldn't get a parking decal from my property manager's office since they're closed currently. However, I was able to get into contact with someone and was given an online permit to prove that my car can park there. This is an official permit that I paid for and doesn't expire for months. However, my car gets towed EVERY time at 2 am and I have to pay the driver $60 every morning despite showing him my decal.
He says although the decal is official, the head of my HOA who lives in my neighborhood keeps reporting my car to get it towed and once he gets the order I have to pay him to get my car back. As much as I hate to be this person, I am the only Black person in my community and this guy has made it clear that he doesn't like my family living there and had always given us a hard time since he moved in three years ago, even though my family has lived here for over 23 years.
I have no idea how to contact HOA or the property manager as my mother deals with them, and every time the car was getting towed except the last time, she was the one to catch them and pay. I will be contacting the HOA with her when she gets home and will try and contact the property manager. My neighbor is a jerk and I will also be speaking to him personally when I get home.
91. Did Not See That Coming...
I was asking a witness about a conversation from years ago, and how he could remember it so well. His answer was disturbing. When I asked how he could possibly be so sure about the exact time of a meeting that occurred years in the past, the man’s reply was unforgettable. He said, "I remember because right after that meeting I went back to my desk and suffered a heart attack." After that, I had no further questions.
92. Miracle Babies
My ex-wife is suing me for child support…but I don't even have the “equipment.” I lost it when I was 14 due to a major health problem. I married a woman who at the time claimed to be asexual, however eventually she told me that she was pregnant with twins with a man she was sleeping with. We divorced before the children were born. This is now four years later.
So I received a letter in the mail that said I'm being sued for child support. The children are definitely not mine and we divorced before they were even born. I'm in a horrible situation, my health is very poor and my finances are very, very limited. I'm barely affording to survive here.
93. This Old House
I'm not a lawyer, but I was involved in an outrageous case that changed my life. I bought a property while I was in college. When purchasing, I got title insurance from First American Title. At the time, the seller suggested I use them because that's who HE used and they did a great job—this will become important later.
Three weeks after buying the place, my nightmare begins. I get served by a Sheriff. Lawsuit says I'm in unlawful possession of someone else's property. What? So, I sent a letter to my title company and told them to handle it. No problem. They hired a lawyer who responded. Apparently, some guy who owned the house 10 or 15 years before had lost it in a lawsuit judgment.
Later, however, the lawsuit was overturned, and he wanted his property back. So, the previous owner sued the SELLER, AKA the guy I bought it from. The seller did the same thing I did, and told the title company First American. And they fought it for years. So, then this jerk seller decides to sell the property to me and not disclose this little problem.
Title company doesn't say anything, either. I didn't know any of this until one day in court, my attorney mentioned how she was so sick of dealing with this guy, Tim, who was trying to sue for the property he lost. I did some research and realized it was big cover-up by the seller and the title company. This went on for YEARS, as this Tim guy wouldn't go away.
College ends, and I need to move to another city. I can't sell the house because no one in their right mind would buy a house they know they are going to get sued for. So, I sued both the seller and the title company. Scraped every penny I had to keep it going. It came down to my last dime, but finally, we got them to settle.
This was basically paying me for what I owed on the house, and nowhere near what I should have gotten. And—the best part—the SELLER had to buy the house back. I think they are still battling it to this day. Same guy.
94. A Scorned Man
A new neighbor bought a house across the street about six months ago. A few weeks back, I was working in the garage when I saw h+im take his dog directly across the street, into my front yard. He let it pee in my yard and then walked straight home. He didn't notice me—my garage is set up as a shop and is pretty busy, and the garage door is up a lot—but this piqued my interest because it's weird.
Now, my wife and I have a dog so there are a few dog droppings from her that we pick up on a regular basis. My wife had been doing the dooty duty recently, so I asked her if there are more piles than normal. Sure enough, she said there had been a ton for a while now. She figured it was jerks walking their dogs and letting them poop on our lawn.
I figured it was our new weirdo neighbor. It happened again around a week later: I was in the garage as the neighbor took his dog into our lawn. This time the dog dropped a deuce and he started to walk away without picking it up. I called out to him, asking him if he needs a plastic bag to pick up after his dog, and he avoided eye contact and scurried back home. But I wasn’t about to give up that easily.
I went across the street and knocked on his door. He didn't answer. We then set up a security camera to discretely watch the front lawn and I kept an eye out for when he was next out in his yard so I could talk to him. I reviewed the footage over the next few days and, sure enough, he was consistently taking his dog to do the deed in our yard. Why our yard? No clue, we've never had any interaction with this guy whatsoever.
The next time I saw him walking to his car, I confronted him. I simply told him that I knew he was taking his dog to poop in our yard and if I caught him doing it again I'd call the authorities to report him for trespassing. He denied doing it, claiming it must be other neighbors. Then he got in his car and drove away with me standing in his driveway.
So I review the footage from the last few days. The tapes made my jaw drop. Dude is not walking his dog into my yard anymore: he's letting the dog poop in his yard…he then scoops it up, walks it across the street, and tosses it into my yard with a shovel. What the absolute heck is going on here. How do I even begin handling this?
95. A Swing And A Miss
A guy found a rock in the middle of Melbourne that he believed came from an underground volcano, therefore he discovered the volcano and he owned the volcano. Therefore, the Melbourne city council and indeed the state government should pay him rent to live on top of his underground volcano. Fun Fact: Australia is the only continent with no active volcanoes.
96. Joy Ride Gone Wrong
So I dropped my Subaru WRX off to be serviced at a third-party service center. They called me to tell me my car was ready for pick up. When I arrived today, I waited around two hours while they were getting my car ready for pickup…to finally be told that they accidentally gave it to another customer. They offered a rental car for the meantime until they can get it back, which they said would hopefully be in the next few days. But that’s not what happened at all.
I called the authorities and the employees got mad and stressed out immediately. Turns out one of the managers took it for a joyride and wrecked it, which they admitted to. I still have not seen it but I was told the damage was extensive and that I would be held liable for payment to fix part of it. At this point, I’m going to get a lawyer involved.
I shouldn't have to pay for anything they have messed up on. Even if they offer to cover fixing it, I’m a little uneasy about that. Now that it has been in a collision it has much less value and could be prone to future problems. They said if I didn't get lawyers involved they would cut me a deal, but I’m really not having that. Not to mention, they have been lying to me for hours.
At this point, I am pressing charges against them for theft, and I have filed official complaints with the Motor Vehicle Dealer Board and the Office of the Attorney General Consumer Protection Section, and I will be suing for an undisclosed but reasonably high amount.
97. Sole Custody Is Not In Your Stars
Staff Attorney for a judge. Not a divorce but a custody modification hearing. Ex-wife wanted sole L&P custody of the kids because the ex-husband was spending all his money on a palm reader/psychic and refused to pay child support. On cross examination, ex-wife's attorney got him to admit that he was spending all his discretionary income on this psychic.
He said he had spent over $5,000 on "readings" and other services there. Judges frequently chime in with questions in domestic matters, so my judge asked why he was not paying support as his divorce decree required. His "explanation" was bonkers. He said i) the psychic could "read" that his children were provided for without his money and ii) he would be able to repay the ex when he takes the children to Mexico permanently to "seek great riches" there.
Which my judge read as, "My psychic told me to kidnap my kids.”
98. Get OUT
I think my boyfriend has been secretly drugging me for a while now and is gaslighting me. I know this is going to be hard to explain, but I have been having gaps in memory that I have been explaining away as being tired, or overworked, or whatever else. I was going to ask my boyfriend about it, since he is a doctor, but then I started to notice one chilling thing.
This seems to happen when I go on dates with him. I know it must be crazy, but I have woken up with dried…stuff…on my breasts several times with no memory of the night before. I know it’s him, too. The first time it happened was when we were drinking and I wrote it off as too much to drink. But then there were a few times when I KNOW we were not drinking.
I decided to break up with him over it…only to suddenly find myself on a date with him a few days later. I had not yet had the conversation to break up with him, but planned on it next time I talked with him. I remember being at the restaurant, but nothing before that. My car and his car was in the parking lot too so I was confused. I decided to play along when he asked me to come back to his place.
After three days at his place I remembered everything so I was starting to trust him again. I was going to ask him about my memory issues when he randomly pointed to these red bumps on my thigh and said I should be treating those sores. I had completely forgotten they were there. These little red bumps that look like needle injections that got infected. I got so freaked out he mentioned them that I decided to leave.
The next day he came over to “Check on me” and I remember waking up in bed with no memories. Then today he met me for lunch saying we had agreed to meet. I never agreed to meet with him and would never want to now. He does this all the time, saying we agreed to do something I have no memory of. I am sick and tired of it and want him punished.
This has started to affect my work life as well as I start to get paranoid when I see a boss walk into a room after making eye contact with me. I get paranoid that they are about to fire me. My friends also state I have been acting strangely and out of character. I have even begun to lose sleep and sleepwalk when I do. Is there a way to have blood work done to see what kind of drug he is using on me?
99. A Pretty Embarrassing Mix-Up
I was representing a woman with a severe neck injury. Opposing counsel presented a test result that showed her cervical exam was normal. I felt almost bad when I pointed out he had the wrong cervical area in mind…
100. Psycho: The True Story
In October 2020, my husband and I were renting in a duplex where my father-in-law owned the half we lived in, and a separate family (an adult daughter acting as a caregiver to an elderly mother) owned the other half. We brought our son home from the NICU in August, and towards the end of September, the caretaker neighbor started to pound on the shared wall if she could hear him cry.
The pounding escalated over the next two months. And then it took a cruel twist. The younger caretaker neighbor bought a megaphone to yell through the wall and threatened to “rip us apart.” She called us child predators, and she’d yell threats until 3 or 4 in the morning. The authorities were called multiple times, but nothing could be done about it.
One officer told us “The threats don’t mean anything if you don’t actually do it.” The elderly mother hadn’t been seen in several months, but requests for wellness checks were brushed off. The general advice I got was that as renters, we couldn’t do anything. It was also suggested that this was reasonable behavior, since the crying baby was probably really annoying.
Eventually, we moved in with my grandmother for our safety. This was after the neighbor busted a softball-sized hole through the shared wall to scream at us, and occasionally just stare at us. But the outcome to this was almost indescribably wild. See, the smell that came out of the hole was awful. We should have known something was up then.
Our security cameras also recorded her coming to my son’s nursery window at around 2 am almost daily, just staring and holding her cat. It took until the end of January for the authorities to be able to enter her property. When they arrived, they discovered that the elderly mother had been deceased since at least June, and the daughter had the corpse dressed in her Sunday best, rotting in a deadbolted bedroom.
The news article said the mother passed from natural causes. The daughter was taken to an inpatient psychiatric facility.
101. It Hits The Fan
I worked at my local district attorney's office as a prosecutor when I was freshly minted lawyer. We had a special setting trial on a case that had been reset too many times. The week before, it became clear that this particular case was going to finally be tried. I was ready at the State's table waiting for defense counsel when he walks in and tells me he's going to ask for a continuance.
I'm pretty sure I laughed, thinking that it was never going to happen. So the judge walks in angry that he has to sit through another continuance request. Meanwhile, I get the aroma of something foul in the courtroom and I can't place where it’s coming from. The judge asks the defense attorney why he needs another continuance and the defense attorney pulls out his briefcase and opens it. Its contents almost made me vomit.
He pulls out a ziplock bag with soiled underwear inside. Turns out he defecated his pants that morning in court. He was an elderly attorney and was taking stool softeners. The continuance was granted, and in fact, the entire courtroom shut down for the day to allow maintenance time to clean and shampoo the seats he was sitting on.
102. A Speedy Trial
My stepmother took a case involving alleged workplace racism, where an African American woman was offended by a man making a joke about "African and European swallows" in response to someone’s question about swallows. According to my stepmother, she literally had to buy and play clips from a VHS copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in court to show the woman that it was just a Monty Python reference.
Luckily, the guy she accused won, and our family got to keep the VHS tape.
103. The Super Computer
I run a consumer advocacy firm, and I had a client come in and tell me that he bought a product, and the company refused to honor the warranty after the product broke. I asked for details, and he just started screaming in my face, asking if I was going to take his money or not. I decided then that I wasn't taking him on as a client, but I wanted to know what was going on.
I convinced him to tell me what happened. His explanation made my jaw drop. Turns out, he bought a computer back in the 1990s. It had just recently stopped working. But not because it was old, oh no. It was slow, so he picked it up and threw it out of a two-story window. And then he wanted to sue the manufacturer for breaking warranty.
104. Not A Good Place To Lie About Your Priors
My sister got T-boned by a car, causing a concussion, when I was younger. Long story short, we were in court with the judge, who asked the driver if he had ever sped before. “No, your honor, I never speed” was his reply. The judge asked him a couple more times if he was sure, if he never sped. Ever? The driver was adamant that he never sped and never had before.
A few minutes later, my sister's lawyer gave the judge some paperwork. She read it, and said to the driver, “It seems that you have some past driving violations. Can you tell me what they are for?” He looked down, "............ speeding." The driver had to pay medical bills for my sister.
105. A Convenient Truth
I’ve been a lawyer for 12 years. One of my clients was charged with "stealing a mobile toilet." After we won, he told me he actually did it, and still owns it. The dingus had the thing in his backyard because he was lazy and his office was nearby. I forced him to deliver it back that night...I’m still offended that he lied to me the whole time.
106. The Revenge Of The Ex
My client let his ex-girlfriend—they weren’t married—live in his house with her new boyfriend until her child’s school year ended. Very reasonable and understanding as heck. All in the child’s interest—who is not his child, by the way. My client was rich and bought and paid for everything they needed on top of all that other generosity.
Finally, the ex and the kid move out. When we arrived at the house, there was nothing to see. She dug up half the spruce hedge with her new boyfriend. Half is hers she said, since they planted them together. They probably burned it, because we found some branches in a barrel behind the house, where there was clearly burnt something. House was cleaned out. They took even the spoons and carpets.
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107. The Good Wife
Summer of 2018, I get work regarding what seemed from the client's description—a pretty drawn out and messy divorce case. The husband was my client, and he made it seem, very adamantly, that his soon to be ex-wife was after his every penny. Given; he appeared to have a fairly high paying job, it looked like a pretty common type of case, the city I work in has many instances of this, it has a high cost of living and a lot of well-paid working professionals in private industry.
He was a very well spoken, amicable guy in his late 50s, and truly seemed like he'd been taken by surprise and betrayed by his soon to be ex-wife. When I actually got to the case, however, I was basically floored. His wife was a working professional as well (worked in government), they'd been married for over twenty years and had two kids together, and a paid off house.
Before taxes he made almost three times what she did, not counting his stock options, and yet she'd contributed equally to their mortgage on every home they'd owned over the course of the marriage. By all accounts, despite a vast difference in income, she'd carried her weight, raised two kids, and worked full time during the entirety of the marriage.
She could have easily raked him over the coals in the divorce if it had gone to court. Instead, it seemed like she'd done everything she possibly could to not have him subjected to that. This divorce had been ongoing for five years before he hired me, and it was basically him looking a gift horse in the mouth over and over, a constant renegotiation on the contract they'd both signed initially, with him skimping on alimony and then debating on lesser terms.
He was basically given an inch and tried to take a mile, dragging it out for so long that per divorce law it had to go to court. I almost suspect he did so as a way to try and drag her through the mud, though he may have genuinely been that delusional. I consider it a win only because his ex-wife was adamant about only wanting what was somewhat fair, and for it to be over because of the strain it was having on the family.
Per the contract he owed her, there was about 50,000 in backpay, but she was content with 15,000, which was less than this guy made in a month. I did regret the "win" though, because she seemed like a very nice woman with the patience of a saint, while almost all of his anger towards her seemed to come from a wounded ego.
108. A Promise Is A Promise
Not a lawyer, but I have a pretty ridiculous and tragic story from my own family. So, my grandfather promised my cousin when he was a kid that if he ever needed help in life, he would help him. You know, pretty standard grandpa stuff. Well, my cousin went to college at the University of Virginia and after that, he wanted to go to law school.
He didn't have enough money to attend, so he sued my grandfather on the basis that my grandfather had promised him “anything.” My grandfather didn't want to go to court, so he just settled. It was all very sad and I haven't seen my cousin in over five years.
109. Cover Up
I convicted a father for killing his wife. Then, years later I found out the awful truth. It turns out that the father was lying when he confessed. He was actually covering for his teenage son, who actually been the one who attacked the mother. In the years between the conviction and my discovery, the son committed suicide and the father was content to serve his time in prison.
110. The Cat’s Meow
My dad is an in-house lawyer for a major American insurance company. He once spent an entire year trying to help deny insurance benefits for a painter who had stepped off his ladder onto a cat, fallen down the stairs, and become paralyzed. The insurance company was arguing that a cat was a commonly expected occupational hazard for a painter.
As a result, they claimed he was negligent in not checking for cats before stepping down. A whole year of his life. Over whether a cat is a known occupational hazard of house painting.
111. No Lesson Learned
In one of my first cases after passing the bar exam, a young man retained me on a drunk driving charge. No one was hurt, but he totalled his car. During trial, the officer testified that my client was clearly wasted at the scene of the accident, and that my client was loudly blaming the accident on the idiot who took his car, crashed it, and then fled before law enforcement arrived.
However, according to two other witness statements, my client's friend (the passenger) was the one blaming a mystery stranger, not my client. The officer must have confused the two men during his testimony. This discrepancy raised a reasonable doubt in the judge’s mind, so she acquitted my client. Looking back, I wish she hadn't.
At the time, the acquittal was somewhat unexpected for me. In my personal view, my client was clearly responsible for the accident, regardless of who was blaming the mystery idiot to the officers. But I was happy my young client got off, no one was hurt, and lessons were learned. And I was quite euphoric to have won my first big case.
The regret? About a month after the acquittal, my young client called me at 3 am from the local detainment center saying, “It’s me again! The authorities got me again! Can you help me?” Not only did I answer no, I instantly regretted getting the earlier acquittal. My client apparently didn’t learn any lessons...
112. The Worst Of The Worst
Lawyer and dog enthusiast here. During law school, I had the opportunity to work under a special license for the public defender in my city. Like in most cities, they were grossly understaffed and overworked, so I got to do an actual misdemeanor trial. The client that I had to accept—honestly, was forced to accept—was a woman who killed two puppies by neglect.
She left them in a cage outside, in February, with no food or water, then she called animal control to get them. I couldn't look at this person without feeling utter disgust. It did not help that she had a mustache and a dead tooth. I asked her why she waited so long to call animal control, thinking that she should've called before so they could have been saved.
She replied "I don't like dogs." I had to defend this woman as the first person I ever represented. She took a decent plea. When it was concluded, she thanked me and tried to shake my hand. I just gave her a look and left.
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113. Twenty Years
I prosecuted a murder case. 21-year-old kid starts dating an older guy's ex-girlfriend. The older guy, a real biker dude, was going all over his small town talking about how he was going to kick the kid's butt. The older guy sends some inappropriate pictures of the ex while he's getting rowdy at a bar, so the kid says something smart in response. Older guy comes to the kid's house to fight him.
The kid shoots him once, and the older guy doesn’t survive. Jury didn't buy self-defense or castle doctrine. Convicted of voluntary manslaughter. Twenty years. Burned up his appeals with no luck. I have a son about the kid's age. I could totally imagine him doing the exact same things if he were in a similar situation. It's going to haunt me forever. No doubt about it. Started thinking about other jobs the moment the verdict came back.
114. Big Hearts, Bigger Stomachs
I recently had a case settle where my client was so obviously lying it was painful. He was in a fender bender and said he was too disabled to drive, or to work at the office as a result. He then claimed that his employer fired him after he had been on disability leave for almost a year. Some really big claims. A few months after filing, we made a ruinous discovery.
He played in a national, amateur, full-contact football league and there was footage of him getting tackled, endzone dancing, and tackling during the time he claimed he was too hurt to sit at a desk. Even when I confronted him on it, he claimed he hadn’t played while he was injured—despite having a stat line and footage of him playing from games dated on days he was supposedly getting physical therapy.
We didn’t settle for as much as most of my cases, but he still walked away with like $20k. I’m happy to be a plaintiff’s attorney for the most part because my clients have typically been wronged but he was such a bald-faced liar it really made me angry.
115. Taking Its Toll
As a former employment lawyer, I defended a company in a lawsuit in which their employee had an accident, lost her left leg, and had the left side of her body covered in burn scars—with the company at fault. The case was more or less like this. This lady worked at a toll booth on a highway. Whenever she needed to go to the toilet, she'd have to close the toll and change the sign lights to red so no one would go through that toll.
Unfortunately, due to lack of maintenance, one day, the lights did not change. The results were catastrophic. As the lady was crossing the road, a car ran her over and dragged her for 10 excruciating meters. After defending this case and this horrible company, I realized that I no longer wanted to do this kind of work. I dropped everything and quit the week after.
116. Spinal Injury
I shadowed on a personal injury case. Their client was drinking in one of our guy's bars and gets wasted, becomes abusive to staff and then storms out, falling down the stairs. This resulted in a C6 ASIA B incomplete spinal injury—a severe loss of mobility and sensation. His people sue, and we force them to accept contributory negligence and personal liability.
He gets an okay payout that covers his lawyer's fees and immediate needs and is left disabled. Even if it was seen to be his fault it was still hard thinking that his life will never be the same just because of one rowdy night. Spinal injury care is massively expensive and the money he received wouldn't be sufficient for his whole life.
117. Little Girl Lost
A woman wanted her daughter’s custody. We used the state preference about custody going to the mother (judge bias), her improved economic situation, and some minor garbage like the daughter’s grades and discipline problems at school to discredit the dad. Not even a month after we won, the mother calls and says she had a ''problem."
Then she explains the ''problem'' was that her boyfriend forced himself on the girl, and after that she had the gall to ask that we pick up HIS defense. It was one of the things that made me want to quit government work.
118. Dog Days
Family law is a little different, in that you never really "win" a case per se. You may get more favorable rulings or better terms, but unless the opposing party did something mindbogglingly stupid it's never a decisive "win" really. Although I did have a case where my client fought really hard for the dog, and then ended up turning him over to a shelter. Freaking jerk. The ex-wife received an "anonymous" tip and was able to get him back quickly.
119. Rotten To The Core
I worked in defense and represented a guy who had been driving while impaired. Long story short, he was pulled over by law enforcement after they followed him leaving a bar. At trial, I got the one of the officers to admit that during the 2.5 miles he followed my client for, he did not observe a single moving violation—no speeding, erratic driving, driving over the lines, blowing stop signs, running red lights. He didn’t even “stop suddenly” at red lights.
I also got the DRE officer to testify that the accused only spoke Spanish and they couldn’t get an interpreter officer to the roadside to explain the field sobriety exercises, which the officers documented the accused “refused to perform.” Jury came back in 15 minutes. The guy was extremely grateful, and his lovely family was very gracious in thanking me and our office. Felt good about the whole thing. Then everything went so, so wrong.
A couple months later, I’m in the county to meet with a client, and I see him in one of the pods. I find out that sometime after the trial he inappropriately touched his 8-year-old step-daughter. I think about that case a lot.
120. Archaic Jury
I worked very closely on a case where the client had brutally forced themselves on their spouse. It was clear from the beginning that the client was mentally unstable and very capable of doing this same type of thing again. We ended up winning because the victim was a young woman, her demeanor during the trial was atrocious, and the jury was all older men. Awful.
121. Doubtful Justice
I had a divorce case where I represented a wife who was livid because her husband left her for another woman. The wife reported that their young daughter made a comment about something that could be interpreted as inappropriate touching by her father, the husband. The only conceivable corroboration about the comment would have come from the daughter’s testimony.
However, the daughter was so young that her credibility would be suspect, and nobody wanted to put her through the ordeal of testifying against her father. There was no possibility of prosecuting the father, because there was no other evidence that he'd mistreated the daughter. But the wife pushed for sole custody and insisted that the father would only get supervised visitations for the next year.
We/she won. I’ll never know for sure what happened between the father and daughter, but the more I think about in retrospect, the more I doubt that justice was served.
Wikimedia Commons, Donnie Ray Jones
122. Telling Tattoo
I helped a man regain visitation of his child after a year or so behind bars. I thought I was a great humanitarian. Oh, the hubris that comes from being a baby attorney! As we were having a chinwag after court, waiting for his ride, he showed me his tattoo: a giant symbol to show his dedication to the White Resistance. I’m a blue-eyed blonde, so I guess he thought I was down with the cause. I went home and threw up.
123. Phoning It In
I once represented an insurance company in an awful case. A man had a brain injury due to a car accident, and passed six months later. His family sued my client. I've never seen a lazier effort on behalf of a plaintiff. His firm immediately handed the case over to a junior associate. She barely did anything with it. We had settlement negotiations but they were way too high considering the lack of any medical evidence they had to link his demise to the car accident.
It probably was related, but you can't walk into court with that argument and no evidence to support it. That seemed to be their plan. On the eve of trial, I told the other side's lawyer to accept the settlement but she refused. I told her she would lose because I was going to get all of her "evidence" thrown out. Still, they went to trial.
The partner that was supposed to be there with her, but he didn't show up because his dog was sick. No joke. As I predicted, all of her evidence was thrown out. The family was sobbing as the case devolved. In the end, my firm won but I didn't feel great about it. The judge was appalled. I'm sure the firm was sued for malpractice. The young associate got fired within weeks.
124. Cashing Out
I settled a personal injury case for a guy and he was set to get about $5,000. He was behind bars at the time. I held the money for a couple months and when he got out, he came by to get the money without delay. The next day, the authorities came around and asked if I knew him. I explained that I did. I was told he passed that night of an overdose and the only thing found on him was my card, some substances he had not yet used, and a needle.
125. Caught Red-Booted
This wasn't my case, but in docket court one morning, the accused wore a pair of very unique custom made red cowboy boots...taken from the house he was accused of robbing. He wore them. To court. To plead not guilty. The prosecutor was laughing.
126. Saw Situation
When my uncle was a young personal injury lawyer and had to take all the cases assigned to him, he had a client who was drinking with his neighbors on someone's front porch. It was a spontaneous get together and he got quite toasted. The client starts talking about his amazing new portable saw he just bought. He brings it out to demonstrate, propping up a board against the porch stair and his thigh. He proceeds to cut himself so badly that his genitals were hanging on by a thread.
So, my relative has this guy in to chat, and he says he wants to sue the whole world: the maker of the saw, the store that sold it and the neighbor whose porch he was on. He unexpectedly drops his pants right then and there to show the damage. He refused to accept any blame for it. And I always thought lawyers had boring jobs.
127. The Self-Fulfilling Defense
Currently studying law. One of my tutors told me about a case he had while working for the state, where the defendant tried to claim that being an orphan had given him severe PTSD and mental illness and he was unfit to stand trial for what he had done. Unfortunately, he was on trial for murdering his parents, so it didn't really fly.
128. The Power Of Money
We settled a case for several million dollars for a girl’s father, who passed. The mother, who was divorced from the father, tried every way possible to get the money, but it was placed into a blocked account until the girl turned 18 years old. The DAY she turned 18, mom told her they were going to transfer the money to a "better account."
Mom transferred it to her own account and fled the country WITHOUT the daughter. Screwed her own kid over for money, and essentially made her kid an orphan. Money does horrible things to people.
129. Sleight Of Hand
As a public defender, I defended a grown man accused of taking magic cards from Wal-Mart. There was an hour-long security video meticulously showing, from dozens of angles, that he was picking up sets of cards, unwrapping them, and discarding the wrappers around the store. He insisted that he was innocent, and we actually went to a jury trial instead of securing a plea deal. This turned out to be a huge mistake.
It took the jury just eight minutes to convict him, and the judge laid into my client, telling him that he was the worst thief he had ever seen. The best part? At one point in the trial, I had to spend no fewer than 45 minutes explaining to the judge what Magic Cards even are. He couldn't understand why anyone would need more than one deck.
130. The Other Shoe Drops
I worked in a big firm, and we had a potential client who once needed to access something on a high shelf when she was at work. Instead of using the step that was provided, she took it upon herself to take her shoes off, then stand on her chair to reach the shelf. She forgot about her own shoes on the way down and tripped over them. She then tried to blame her employers. That's not how it works, love.
131. A White Lie
I used to work in matrimonial law, which is the worst practice area of them all. You see fairly reasonable, reasonably good people reduced to the worst of themselves in every aspect. They're emotionally distraught, seeking vengeance, have wounded pride, etc. This one guy was an executive at a big company in NYC. He was faithful (supposedly) to his first wife of 40 years, cared for her through sickness, and then her passing.
He had a grown son. He then became addicted to strip clubs—he spent something like $10-20k a month at them—and met a girl there who he eventually impregnated and then married, with pre-nup. She had two kids with him; he reduced his club spending to $50k a year. Apparently, she suspected him of being unfaithful with one of her co-workers, so she filed for divorce.
She claimed he was an unfit parent, and he claimed the same. The guy was not attractive, though he kept himself well-groomed. He was also in his 70s! I don't understand, maybe he was just a dollar sign to the woman. In any case, one day while discussing his pre-nup, we had to ask: "Did you cheat on her?" because that would nullify the pre-nup.
"No,” He says. We respond, “Come on. We need to know all the information before we can proceed." We needle him for an HOUR on this…and then he says, “Well yeah, the one time.” That was it. By the way, his wife wanted to break the pre-nup—which afforded her $7-10k a month for child care needs alone—and make him pay upwards of $25k/month to her. Glad to be out of that practice area.
Pikrepo
132. A Very Particular Craving
The client wanted to sue because there were no strawberries in her fruit salad when she bought it from a supermarket. Thankfully, my secretary was able to screen the call. She asked if the package said it had strawberries, and the response was, "No, but I thought it would have." I don't know how these people manage to make it through life.
133. Suffering For His Art
Back when I was doing appeals, I had to argue that the rap lyrics my client wrote while sitting behind bars awaiting extradition to face murder charges were inadmissible for First Amendment reasons. The guy had written a fairly detailed song essentially describing him performing the act he was ultimately convicted of, all while he was waiting to be tried for it.
I don't know what he was thinking. I made a "but this is art!" argument, which was actually kind of cool because I did a lot of interesting research and it's a hot-button topic these days. Regardless, I lost.
134. Same Difference
To this day this case amazes me. As a first-year associate, I was given a terrible insurance case where my client received a flu shot and thereafter felt pain in his shoulder. He went to another doctor who performed an MRI and determined that he had a torn rotator cuff. Even though these things were almost certainly not related, my job was to argue that the shot caused the rotator cuff tear.
Even so, our doctor witness somehow connected the two and the case paid out. Being the bottom of the totem pole, I had no choice but to take the case—which was handed down by a partner. But at the same time, it just overwhelmingly made me feel like the worst stereotyped attorney. I hated having to walk into court with such a corrupt argument. I could feel my reputation being destroyed in real time.
135. Living In Sin
My client in a divorce had OCD which manifested primarily financially, so he made his ex-wife's life a penny-pinching nightmare. Examples: he was obsessed with avoiding unnecessary driving (wear and tear on the car, gas expenses), so he cut the whole family’s hair at home and never let them eat at a restaurant or go to the movies.
But here's the weirdest part of them all: he kept one toilet paper roll on him at all times, and you had to get one square from him before you could go to the bathroom. He never gave more than one square. Wife finally got fed up and left him when 1) he gave her bangs during an in-home haircut and 2) their daughter was so traumatized by the toilet paper thing they couldn’t potty train her.
Also: he HATED paying his divorce lawyer bill. He was also an old-fashioned mega-Catholic who considered divorce a deadly sin. He viewed my whole job as an unnecessary (and sinful) expense.
136. Sure Bud, I Believe You
I’m a law librarian in a big law school. This was years ago, before the Internet. A man used to call the reference desk all the time with odd questions about currency and laws related to it. He claims he is an author and is writing a book about how aliens are going to come to Earth and take over by manipulating our currency system.
He has all kinds of questions about the money. Shows up in person one day, and looks like something out of central casting: Odd fitting green suit, grey hair that is wild and looks like it has not been combed since Nixon was in power, glasses, and an agitated demeanor. I spent an entire afternoon explaining why there is no information on how to make fake money.
Unsplash
137. The Oldest Trick In The Book
I’m currently representing a sweet old lady on a case. I’ll be sparse with the details in case anyone figures out who I am. Long story short, this lady’s neighbor convinces her that her house is basically unsellable, that her house requires all sorts of repairs, the repairs to the house would bankrupt her, and that she should just sell the house. To him.
He shows up at her house the next day with documents to sign. She has no idea what’s going on. Doesn’t read anything (actually has an eye condition) and signs everything. When she finally sees a lawyer to close the deal, he says you can’t do this. You see, the price of the transaction was about 36% of what the house is actually worth and there weren’t any repairs that needed to be done that would justify the price.
Not kidding, it was stuff like fixing a faucet in the bathroom. Also, she didn’t understand that she would have nowhere to live afterward. Old lady thought she could just stay in the house for the rest of her life. To make matters worse, she’s living off a modest pension and the other side is suing for the house and everything she's got.
They’re essentially trying to get her to cave because her fees are getting exorbitant. I hate people—but this guy is a special kind of evil. If it went to trial, she’d to have to spend a lot of money. Money she doesn’t have. She has an eye condition (uveitis), but it isn’t bad enough to qualify as a defence. At the time, she was driving.
She’s a terrible witness. Her evidence is all over the place. When she was examined (deposed for you Americans) she denies being taken advantage of. Not great for our position. In Ontario, where I practice, contracts for the purchase of real estate don’t have to be notarized. Thankfully though, we literally just settled this afternoon, so my client can live in peace. In a little more debt than before, but nothing that will bankrupt her.
138. Message Received
I remember a guy called me and wanted to take action against the Post Office. He had received a letter from them saying that they would no longer deliver packages to him, as he was never “appropriately” dressed when he opened the door to accept them. I remember being nervous about asking him to elaborate…so I didn’t.
139. Looking A Gift Horse In The Mouth
I interned at a law office, and this client came in to consult with my boss. They owned a horse farm in the country, and their sister had ridden one of the horses off the farm and into swampy, bogish territory off the beaten path. This client was utterly set on suing the sister for "decreasing the value of her horse" and wanted to sue her for $500 of damaged goods. Just….$500.
My boss just kind of sat there and stared at her. Being the good guy he is, he told her, "Miss, it's going to cost you more than $500 in fees, you'd be better off doing this in small claims court. But I wouldn't recommend that either, as the judge will likely throw out the case." The client was vehement on suing her sister in court with an attorney to "Teach her a lesson that she can't just ride off on other people's horses without permission."
My boss told her there was no way in good faith that he could assist with this lawsuit.
Pixabay
140. Pot, Meet Kettle
I’m a defense social worker. I had a client who ran three red lights on a very busy street, knocked over an officer, drove up on the sidewalk, and was finally dragged out of his car in a parking lot. He wanted us to refer him to a civil attorney to sue the city because an officer was too rough with him during his arrest. I mean, I get it. They were probably rough with him. But good luck with that lawsuit.
Pexels
141. Doctor’s Defense
I work in medical malpractice defense. Once I had an obstetrician who burned a patient during a procedure. For the next 16 months, whenever I met with the doctor, he lied to me, saying he had no idea how it happened. But the patient came in without a burn, and after the procedure, the patient left with a burn exactly where the doctor had been operating.
There's no way this doctor didn't know what had happened. It wasn't until I brought up settlement, because by that point, I knew we weren't going to win, that he finally admitted, "Oh maybe I do know what happened." We ultimately settled that case, but sometimes I think this doctor really ought to have lost both the lawsuit and their license.
142. Creative Uncommon
I was working in a firm and got a call from reception advising that someone had arrived and needed some intellectual property advice. I arrived at reception to find a clearly disturbed woman with a persistent facial twitch and a small, wheeled suitcase. I took her to a conference room to discuss, making sure I kept a good line of sight to reception.
She put the suitcase on the table and opened it to reveal a stack of thousands of handwritten pages and one half of a pair of scissors. She explained that she had written a manuscript about how the city council gave her schizophrenia and hepatitis, aliens took her pets, and that it was all part of a bigger conspiracy involving the army and the Illuminati.
She was worried that our local newspaper was going to take her thoughts and publish her manuscript without her consent, and wanted to register the copyright in her manuscript. We then had a perfectly rational and reasonable discussion about copyright laws. I explained that in our jurisdiction, she didn't need to register it and that she had rights as an author automatically on the creation of the work.
I told her the most useful thing she could do is ensure she had evidence of her creative work, and that she should send a digital copy to herself and a friend, and also leave a copy with a friend. That way if it was published without her consent, she could prove it was her work. We spoke for nearly an hour, she thanked me and then left.
She got free advice, and I didn't get punctured with a scissor. I hope she found the help she needs.
143. Physical Rehab
A guy lost his wife and children in a car accident. He wanted to exercise to get his emotions and mental health back in check. The doctor wrote him recommendations for exercise equipment and he submitted the expenses for the same to his insurer. My client (the insurer) wanted this fought tooth and nail because exercise equipment was only covered for physical rehab and technically, the man was not physically injured.
I do not practice in this area anymore.
144. No Rest For The Wicked
I was representing the government at a social benefits tribunal. The applicant was an autistic man who was struggling to make ends meet, but was trying his absolute best to contribute everything he could to society. He had a job where his manager was very accommodating and was a very sympathetic person. He just wanted the extra cash to make his life a little easier for himself.
Sadly, he didn't qualify for the benefit, but I think he deserved it. My closing argument was that no matter how much we empathized with this man, no matter how deserving we thought he was, he simply didn't qualify and the tribunal had to apply the law. He was unsuccessful, and when I left the building to head back to my office, he was just sitting outside on the curb crying. That image has stuck with me for a few years. Pretty heartbreaking.
That was the lowest point in my career and I have moved on. It's really important to remember that mental health in my line of work is a very real issue that is hurting people. There aren't sufficient supports in place to help people like me and many others who find themselves in positions like this.
145. Jesus Walks
I had a potential client come in and say that he wanted to sue his uncle for murder. Setting aside the fact that you can't sue someone for "murder," I asked him whom did his uncle murder. He replied "Me." I turned the case down.
146. I Haven’t Got You, Babe
I used to work in "baby daddy" court as a caseworker. This guy kept telling me, the mother of the child, and anyone who would listen that the baby was NOT his. When they went before the judge, the judge confirmed through DNA testing that he wasn't the dad. Dude turned around and ripped off his jacket. His undershirt said "NOT THE FATHER!"
147. I Don’t Think That Word Means What You Think It Means
This was unbelievable. My co-worker’s girlfriend filed for divorce a few weeks ago. That's right, girlfriend. They aren't married, and common-law doesn't apply in my state. They lived together for five years. She has a job. She isn't on the mortgage. And she left him a few months ago. There are no kids involved. They were never engaged.
In the "divorce," she wants him to leave his house and she wants to be the one to move back in. She also wants him to pay her $2,800 a month for some reason. I referred him to my divorce attorney, and now that attorney is probably going to represent him. The chick is nuts. She has already tried to get a restraining order against him that was dismissed.
148. Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold
The wife cheated on her husband during his frequent travels for work. She was the one who filed for divorce, and she got to keep the house. Months elapse and the husband is still furious, rightfully so, but has no recourse. Then he has an epiphany: "I wonder if she changed the password to the Nest Thermostat?" She did not.
For the next year, he continues to mess with the thermostat. In the middle of summer when they're sleeping in HIS bed, he turns the heat on to 90 degrees at 3 AM. Middle of winter? Time to shut off the heat and hope the pipes freeze. Away on vacation? Turn the air conditioning down to 55 and let it run 24/7 for a nice surprise bill when they get home.
149. Restraining Order Backfire
A wife filed for a restraining order because she wanted the house during her divorce. The husband has a good job, like $200k per year. The employer finds out about the restraining order and fires the husband. He was a very specialized employee, so the only job he can find close to the house and his daughter is $50k. Ooh boy, did this not go well.
The house gets foreclosed. Child support is set at less than $500 per month. The wife has to get a job as a waitress.
150. Conflict Of Interest
My parents are both attorneys. Most recently, their crazy neighbor asked my dad to serve as his attorney in a slip and fall suit…against my parents. He had come over unannounced and uninvited at 6AM on a snowy morning and fell down our driveway. My dad was the one who helped him up and called the ambulance on his behalf.
The next day, crazy neighbor dropped off documents in my parents' mailbox for my dad to look over to see if he had a case…against my dad. And this is why I hate people.
Pxfuel
151. Doing His Duty
This girl spent almost the entire case berating the guy she claimed was the father of her baby, having people analyze genetic similarities between the child and the “father,” and going on about how this was all ridiculous because she hadn’t been with anybody else in years. The judge finally looked over at the guy and asked him if he had anything to say in his defense since he had just been standing there quietly while taking this verbal assault from his ex-girlfriend.
He motioned to show that he had a folder of paperwork. The bailiff took it up to the judge, who looked it over and then immediately dismissed the case in the guy’s favor. It is then explained that he had been actively deployed by the military for the past four years, and wasn’t even in the country at the time that the baby was conceived.
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