There's never a dull moment in the world of law. From explosive witness testimonies to game-changing arguments, lawyers are always running on high adrenaline when they are in the courtroom. Here are some real cases that are so mind-blowing it's as if they came straight out of a legal drama:
1. 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.
2. A Series Of Unfortunate Events
I had a case that, at first, looked like a standard unemployment deal. My client was a dock worker, made pretty good money, but hadn’t worked for six months and was about to lose his house. I asked for his story, and couldn't believe what I heard. He told me this path to unemployment and where he was now started 20 years ago.
At the time, his older son was in the army deployed at a base in Korea, while his younger son was at a high school party in their town. Apparently, his younger son got into it with another kid over a girl, and the kid grabbed a barbecue fork and pierced his son in the neck. The nightmare only got more horrific. He bled out before an ambulance could arrive and lost his life.
After that, nothing was the same. The older son was devastated because he wasn’t there to protect his brother, and he and his wife ended up divorcing over the grief. Eventually, his older son returned and made a life for himself. He had a couple of kids, and it all seemed good. However, six months prior, he just walked into his garage and offed himself.
He left a note that he couldn’t live with not having been there for his baby brother, even after all those years. So my client went into a depressive state, stopped working, and stopped paying bills. He just couldn’t deal with the grief and destruction of his family that emanated from that one rather random event. What pulled him out of almost ending his own life was that the guy who slayed the younger son came up for parole.
He went and spoke against him getting out and then realized he had to live for his grandkids. I still think about that client regularly.
3. 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.
4. You’re Fired!
I was a newly-minted attorney who couldn’t find work and took anything that came to me. I represented a mother in a custody battle. The dad lived with his father, the child’s grandfather, who had been convicted TWICE of violently harming the grandchildren. My client absolutely forbade me from bringing the grandfather’s convictions before the judge.
She said that he made “some mistakes,” and while she wanted full custody, of course, she felt terrible that the grandfather’s “past mistakes” might be used against him in the future. I was having none of that. I brought it up to the judge anyway. My client fired me on the spot during oral arguments and ended up suing me. It was a mess, but I would do it again.
5. 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.
6. No One Saw This One Coming
We were defending a doctor who made a mistake. One of his patients was suffering from an eye condition that required a unique recovery. After surgery, the patient had to lie face down for the entirety of their day to prevent further eye damage. It had something to do with eye pressure and a gas buildup near the back of the eye. This is where it gets ridiculous.
As it turned out, the patient had decided he was going to go on a plane, but just keep his eyes down the whole flight. The doctor we were defending didn't tell the patient that they couldn't fly during the recovery. So, the patient got on a plane. When they took off, everything was OK. However, during the descent, which people with ear problems can attest, the rapid change in pressure messed up this patient’s condition.
They went completely blind in both eyes due to the descent of the plane. Unbelievably, we lost the case and the doctor had to pay up.
7. 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.
8. Who Dunnit?
There was a case where a mother sold the family farm out from under her son, who was supposed to inherit it. The consequences were brutal. In retaliation, someone in the family tried to off her. There were so many suspects that almost every lawyer in the county was assigned to defend one of them. Forensics eventually narrowed it down to two suspects.
Each adamantly pointed to the other as pulling the trigger, to the point where it was going to be hard to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of either one's guilt. They both pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and served two years.
9. Flu Shot
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 flu 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.
10. Bad Case Of The Smuggler’s Blues
I'm an immigration lawyer who does mostly VAWA (Violence Against Women’s Act) and asylum cases, but I handle other stuff on occasion as well. I had a prospective client come in who was interested in pursuing a relatively straightforward application. He told me that he might have a history that could affect his immigration. I had no idea what I was getting into.
He said that it was only one arrest a while back, and it wasn’t serious. I said, "OK," as nobody’s perfect, and these things happen. A single arrest is generally not a deal-breaker. As I was talking with him, I decided to Google his pretty unique name. A news article came up, from his country, in his language. It's dated the same year that he said.
I asked him, “What kind of offense did you say it was?" He said, "Oh, I think it was drug-related." I figured, alright, marijuana arrest or something—nothing we can't overcome. I clicked through to the article. The photo in the paper looked a lot like my prospective client. It turned out, my prospective client's arrest was not for marijuana at all. It was for blow. And not a little.
This guy was caught attempting to smuggle numerous pallets of blow. I must have looked a little bug-eyed because the guy gave me a sort of sheepish look and a shrug. I told the prospective client that maybe we should start by filing a few FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to see what comes up, and we would go from there.
He agreed. Suffice it to say, getting caught smuggling multiple pallets of hard substances is not a small-time arrest.
11. 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.
12. Great Balls Of Fire
I investigated and prosecuted many arson cases, so I generally worked a lot of fire proceedings. One time, the crews rolled up on a garage fire. They were met with a horrific sight. The home’s resident was holding a blood-soaked towel to his crotch. The medics got him stable and transported him. Later, he told us that a "voice" told him to eat a whole box of saltine crackers without drinking any water, and he was like, ok, and did that.
Then the voice told him to eat the newspaper, and he was like check. Then the voice told him to cut off his testicles with a can opener, and he was like, yep. Then the voice said, set the van on fire in the garage, and he was like, you got it. He did all those things in that order, and there were photos of the scene with his junk right there on the garage floor. We got him into mental health court, and he did pretty well.
13. 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.
14. Good Riddance To This One
I usually defend defective construction and personal injury matters. However, early in my career, we had a case involving a husband and wife who ran a foster home, and one kid was alleging the husband had molested them. I was assigned to defend only the wife under their homeowner's insurance policy. The allegations against the husband were terrible, but the wife had no idea what was going on. But the details were even more heartbreaking.
This poor woman, a former foster child, was trying to give back and help other foster children in the system, and now she found out her husband was a true monster. It was so cruel and unusual, and we just wanted to get her out of the case. Until it all took an even darker turn. When we got more documents, we learned this wasn’t the first child to make allegations.
The dad had been doing this for years, and she knew it. Maybe she was involved, maybe she just ignored it; either way, the whole thing turned ugly. I instantly wanted nothing to do with it. A few weeks later, my boss came in and said he gave the case back to the insurance carrier. It was the only case I've ever felt morally opposed to handling.
15. Archaic Jury
I'm a paralegal, not a lawyer. 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.
16. Dude, Where’s My Weed?
I went to a preliminary hearing once for a 16-year-old getting hit with a murder charge. Basically, the 16-year-old, who looked like he was 30, was getting charged as an adult for attempting to buy quite a bit of pot off of some drug dealer. The dealer tried to rip him off by stuffing the package with cereal instead of the actual pot.
When the kid opened the box during the exchange, he saw that he was getting burned and fired at the dealer. The kid fled to his half-brother’s house until law enforcement found him. Officers interrogated him, and he confessed to everything. The court threw out the officer’s interrogation as evidence because minors have to have a parent or legal guardian present when getting questioned.
The kid didn’t have an official guardian. Nobody knew where his father was, and his mother lived in another state 400 miles away. The kid had been living with his half-brother in a house with about seven other people for the few months prior to the incident.
17. Rich Parents
I got a spoiled brat of a teenager cleared of a shoplifting charge when he absolutely had done it. His rich parents hired me to represent him. I did that to the best of my ability, and we went to trial and won, but I can't say I felt good about it. This kid needed to be taught some accountability for his actions and his parents just wanted to buy their way out of any trouble he got into.
Wikimedia Commons Mindaugas Danys
18. Double-Header Doom
There was a case where a guy had gotten into an argument with another guy at a recreational baseball game. After the game was over, the one guy left and went home. The other guy stayed at the baseball field with his son. About 30 minutes to an hour later, they were still at the baseball field, and the other guy came back. Then the chaos began.
He had a baseball bat and walked straight towards the dad at the pitching mound. He started hitting him over the head with the bat until he became unrecognizable. The kid froze in terror while this guy took his dad’s life. He then walked over to the kid and did the same thing to him. The guy was sentenced to life behind bars.
19. 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.
20. No Response Is Never Good
An Air Force couple had a son. They got divorced. The mother took the son with her to her duty station in Japan and remarried a civilian employee there. The dad was deployed and then moved stations. He kept bugging the mother about when he could see the son. At some point, she just stopped responding. A few months later, the dad filed a report with her command requesting they make her communicate with him.
The dad got a call from an Office of Special Investigations (OSI) agent who he knew. The agent asked him for his son's full name and date of birth. The dad gave it to him, and the agent said, “Look, I didn’t tell you this, but you need to call OSI on her base and find out what happened.” The truth was so much more than the guy could possibly handle.
The mom had gone to the field one day, and the eight-year-old son had been bugging the new stepdad while he was gaming. The stepdad got mad and beat the kid with a piece of the banister from the stair he was working on. Two days later, the mom came back from the field and found the son unconscious, still on the floor.
Because the stepdad’s last home of record was in Maryland, he was tried in federal court in Baltimore. The ER doc who treated the son took the stand and talked about seeing the internal crush injuries, and the coroner spoke about how hard you would have to hit an eight-year-old on the front to cause such bruising on his back. It was heartbreaking.
21. Taking Its Toll
As a former employment lawyer, I regret defending 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.
22. The Proof Was In The Pull-Up
I work on child protection cases. I got an opening brief for a case saying that the mom didn't actually neglect the kids. She got pulled over for expired tags, and the kids were in the car. The officers ended up conducting a search and found drugs and a pipe. So far, pretty standard and nothing too much for alarm. But it was about to get so much worse.
During the stop, the officers pulled the children out of the car and found that the two-year-old daughter had a rather old diaper on. When they went to change her, they found what the examining doctor later called the worst case of diaper rash he had ever seen. There were pictures. No person who saw that could say the child wasn't neglected. I cited those pictures very liberally in my answering brief. Severance was affirmed.
23. Unsafe Roads
The case I particularly hated happened at my first law job. This woman was a long-term client of my boss. In the past ten years or so, she has been caught driving while impaired eight times, violated home incarceration countless times, been caught with controlled substances a few times, and even attacked two people while she was supposed to be confined to her home
My boss at the time was the master of getting people off for these kinds of charges, so this client always managed to stay on home incarceration with whatever releases she desired. I always regretted her cases because that woman is truly a danger to the public. She’s undoubtedly going to end someone's life someday. But lord almighty, if she isn’t the luckiest woman alive in getting away with reckless driving so far...
24. Prime Suspect
Nothing scares me like the failures of the system, as reflected in this case I'm about to tell you. A woman was slashed 20 times, just really bad stuff. When the body was found, the knife was in her chest, which means she was jabbed in the brain before being jabbed in the chest. Law enforcement convinced the medical examiner to determine the case was a suicide because the door was latched from the inside when the body was found.
The door was open when the officers arrived, and the body had already been "discovered.” The only person who told the officers that the door was latched when they found the body was the FIANCE. In any other investigation, anywhere, this person would be the prime suspect. So basically, the officers took the word of the person who should be the prime suspect to determine that this woman who was slashed 20 times, including from behind into her brain, committed suicide. What a joke.
25. 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...
26. You Got The Wrong Guy
While I was working in the public defender's office, we had a pretty good case. Two guys walked into a store, and one of them was packing a revolver. They shoved around the old store clerk and got him to open up the registers. After looting all the cash, the robbers walked out of the store and to their car. But karma was about to get them. The store clerk, who I think was also the owner, went and got his piece and made chase.
He managed to pop off a few shots at the robbers as they wheeled away with great haste. Two officers in the same shopping center were responding to a stabbing at a nearby AA meeting. They heard the shots and saw a car speeding away. This is where it just got silly. As they turned the corner, they saw the old man pointing down the road after the vehicle with his firearm in hand.
They yelled an order to "Freeze! Put down your weapon!" or something to that effect. The old man made the mistake of turning before putting down the piece, so the officers opened fire. The clerk was shot three times by the officers, but fortunately not fatally. The robbers later crashed a few blocks down the road. The clerk was a pretty good shot and managed to hit the getaway driver in the leg, causing him to pass out at the wheel due to blood loss.
27. 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.
28. This Didn’t Check Out
There was a grandparent custody case where the dad was photographed inappropriately touching the eight-year-old daughter under the Christmas tree. The child went for a medical exam, and the doctor reported extensive injuries usually associated with that type of harm. Then he made the worst mistake of his life. He then accidentally checked a box to indicate the injuries were not related to mistreatment.
Law enforcement said there was nothing they could do about it because of the checked box. The mom ended her life "because the dad didn't want to sleep with them both at the same time." Officers lost two polygraph tests and a couple of kits. The grandparents lost the custody case, and the dad got full custody. Just horrible.
29. Dog Trial
Family law is a little different, in that you never really "win" 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.
30. He Was A No-Show
I was defending a guy who was charged with theft of property and breaking and entering. The District Attorney offered a plea deal of 18 months in the slammer. He said he couldn’t be away from his family for 18 months. The guy had some priors, and a trial could have cost him to be gone away a lot longer, but he insisted on taking it to trial.
We struck a jury, and he came to the first day of trial. Surprisingly, the DA was still offering the 18 months right before the trial was to start. The evidence against him was overwhelming. I told him so, but he still wanted to take it to trial. We got through the first day. On the second day, the wheels entirely came off the whole thing.
First, he didn’t show up. The judge said to finish the trial without him, to which I argued against. We went ahead anyway. The jury found him guilty, and they swore out a warrant for him. Later on that day, I found out he hung himself overnight. He really just couldn’t stand to be away from his family for those measly 18 months.
31. 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.
32. Trafficked Then Turned On
There was a case where a lady had been the victim of human trafficking. She was kidnapped in her home country and sold into a ring in the United States. She escaped and applied for asylum. She told the FBI everything she knew about her kidnappers and the others who bought her, putting her life in danger in the process.
She was told that's all it would take to get her asylum and permanent residency. Nope. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) still tried to send her back. However, she won her case, but only because one of the top attorneys in New York took her case on pro bono. It was unbelievable how hard ICE fought to get her sent back and how intense the entire case got.
33. 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.
34. Office Prowler
I used to be an Employment Lawyer, and I defended someone at a Tribunal who would pick on meeker women in his office, flirt with them, and give them shoulder rubs over time. Eventually, as more time would pass, this guy’s hands would get lower and lower until he was full-on groping the women’s breasts in the office.
The difficult part was that he did it in such a sneaky and deceptive way that when all the other employees saw the shoulder rubs, they then suspected that he and his victim were an item. Therefore, the evidence didn’t fall in the poor girl’s favor. He won the case. When he did, he said seven words to me that made my blood run cold.
He told me afterward, “I can’t believe you got me off,” basically admitting it. I quit law after that. I lost the stomach for it.
35. No Protection
Not my case, but a former associate of mine won a restraining order hearing where he represented the person who the order would have been against, AKA not the victim. The victim's request to put a restraining order on his client was denied, and like 2 months later the guy put the victim in the hospital. That one still bothers him.
36. The Far-Reaching Effects Of The Pandemic
I worked in migration law, more specifically in family reunification for unaccompanied refugee minors. My job was to help the parents and siblings with the rightful procedures so they could come live here too. The pandemic made it impossible to schedule meetings at an embassy and delayed everything by months. This one family had made it through the official proceedings and got the green light to pick up their travel papers at the nearest embassy, pre-pandemic.
Then the delay came. This set off a chain of jaw-dropping events. One day after the original appointment, their six-year-old son was kidnapped for ransom. They tried for weeks to find enough money but failed, and the boy died on a video the kidnappers sent to me. Not a day goes by that I don’t see his face in my mind's eye.
Not a night goes by without seeing him in my dreams. The family needed someone to blame, so they blamed me. If only I could have brought them to safety sooner. The most painful part is that were the embassies not closed, they would've been safe. Instead, they still live far away, waiting their turn.
37. Real Estate Litigation
After law school, I had to turn down an amazing job offer because my wife got a better offer somewhere else. So basically, I followed her along and was desperate to find something. After three months of fruitless efforts, I would take just about any job that required a JD. Three months after moving, I got an interview for a "real estate litigation" job.
They hired me the next day, looking back that was probably red flag number one. First day on the job they taught me how to foreclose on a claim of lien. These are two things I had never heard of before. Turns out, it is totally brainless work if you have the right forms . So anyways, it took me about two months to realize this (when I had my first set of hearings) but literally my sole purpose at the firm (which represented over 100 Home Owners Associations) was to take people's houses away for not paying their Home Owner's Association dues.
After my first set of foreclosures, I actually slipped into a pretty legitimate depression. I was getting paid peanuts to drive nearly an hour to work every day, to do work I despised, on behalf of people I literally could not pretend to care about. Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back. I started signing the foreclosures and one day I realized I was THAT GUY. I understand someone has to do the work I guess—there certainly is a lot of money to be made—but it was not for me.
I did that job for three months, came home one Friday, and told my wife I'd rather be homeless than go back on Monday. By some stroke of luck, I started a stellar defense job within two weeks and all of the heartache has 100% been worth it. I've won a lot of cases and never once felt bad about it. Never lost sleep over someone not going behind bars.
So yeah, every case where I took someone's house away (probably two dozen times) for not paying HOA fees (generally $4,000 or less) was the worst case I ever won. Screw those.
38. Trial Trauma
There was a case in which the defendant was the child’s stepfather, and he mistreated her. At 17, she testified to all the things her step-father did over a period of five years. The defense attorney tried to blame the girl for “allowing” everything to happen to her. Since the girl became a very attractive teenager, the attorney used the “she was just too sexy and biologically, the step-father couldn’t control himself” defense.
The prosecution was watching the jury while the defense was cross-examining the girl and saw so many head nods, as though the jury agreed with the idea. Thankfully, the jury did eventually decide to convict the stepfather, but it took a lot of work. After hearing the defense attorney’s statements and seeing certain jury members agree with the idea, we lost a little bit of faith in humanity that day.
While the victim did an incredible job working through the mistreatment in therapy, she exhibited trauma symptoms from testifying in court.
39. Big Regrets
I did some custody work early in my career and won some cases—more on the merit of my trial skills than on the merit of the parents. The thing with family law work in general is that there is essentially no bar to entry. Anybody with a law degree and a pulse can get a family law practice up and running quickly because there is just an absolute glut of work.
What that also means is that 75% of the lawyers practicing family law are clueless and awful. Early in my career I certainly was clueless, but at the least I was not awful. Therefore, in a battle between clueless and awful versus just clueless, clueless usually won. So yeah, I can't recall any specific cases, except to say that fighting over children in court is a terrible thing and basically everyone loses. I regret that entire portion of my career.
40. Nursing Home Nightmares
I worked on a case where a male nurse harmed bedridden patients at a low-income nursing home. We represented the women and sued the nursing home. One of the women had a hip fracture. The worst part was that they complained to staff, and no one listened to them for the longest time because they were old and didn’t have a lot of family.
Our research uncovered tons of other lawsuits across the country alleging all sorts of negligence at other nursing homes run by the parent company.
21. Another Custody Case
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.
41. Shattered Hoop Dreams
A girls youth basketball team from a reservation in the upper midwest went to play in the statewide YMCA league championship game against a non-Indigenous team that was from a town bordering the reservation. The team from the reservation was unsurprisingly severely underfunded, and the girls were from very underprivileged homes.
They got to the game. Right before tip-off, disaster struck. The other team accused them of having boys on their team and demanded that the referees "verify" that they were all female, or else they would file a formal complaint and walk off the court. The two YMCA referees, who were non-Indigenous, agreed. They told the Native-American girls team that they must comply or they would be considered forfeit.
Their team coach got cornered and asked the girls to comply. They did, and each one was required to essentially open their shorts at the waistband to prove they were not male to these referees in the locker room. They were humiliated and mortified, and many ended up suffering PTSD and have long-term mental health injuries. Then came the crushing kicker.
The case got thrown out of court on a technicality. It was absolutely heartbreaking for these girls. Not to mention motivated by prejudice and hatred from the non-Indigenous team, which was all over the evidentiary record. It still makes me ill to think of what transpired and what all of these terrible adults did to those poor girls.
Flickr, franchise opportunities
42. Don’t Look A Gift Horse In The Mouth
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.
I live and work in Canada, 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.
43. Stop Spreading The News
During law school, I clerked with the public defender's office. I was working on a homicide case where our client fatally beat his wife. Then he got in his car, recorded all his calls, and called all of his family and friends to tell them what he had just done. He had no remorse and told everyone how happy he was that she was gone.
This experience, along with others, made me realize that I did not want to do this type of defense work.
44. 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 drunk 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.
45. Trying To Do The Right Thing
There was a case where a guy had committed murder and, after a week, couldn't take the guilt. So, he decided to hand himself in. When he got to the station and confessed, officers asked him where it happened. He told them. Their response was infuriating. They said it was out of their jurisdiction and to go to another law enforcement station to confess because it was closer to where the slaying happened.
So he left and went the next day instead. In the meantime, no one looked for him or asked or anything. It went completely unreported. He did hand himself in, and they began to start proceedings for a case against him. They wanted to include on the report the fact he had been turned away from the first station and still handed himself in to show some sort of character.
However, the judge and the officers said they wouldn't allow it because it would make them look bad. They said they wouldn't let the jury even hear about it.
46. Big Hearts, Bigger Stomachs
Not really “winning” but 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 discovered that 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.
47. The Sister Has Got To Go
I was an articling student at the time. A woman called our firm asking for advice on immigration law. I told her I couldn’t give advice, but I could take any details and book a meeting. She wanted to know about claiming refugee status. I asked her where she was a refugee from. She then told me that she didn’t want to claim refugee status; her sister did.
I asked her where her sister is from, and she told me Hong Kong. I then asked her why she was fleeing Hong Kong. She told me that her sister wasn’t fleeing Hong Kong; rather, she was visiting on a six-month visa. So I asked why she wanted to help her sister get refugee status. She says she doesn't; she wants her sister to leave.
Now, at this point, I was thoroughly confused. So I got her to elaborate. Her confession was bonkers. As it turned out, her sister is visiting and, to quote her, "She is ruining the family!" Her sister was threatening to stay on after her visa expired, and this lady wanted to know whether she could do that. This required no formal advice.
She couldn’t stay. So she asked me what to do about her. I told her, if she doesn't leave when her visa expires, call law enforcement. She thanked me and hung up.
48. 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.
49. Sorry Isn’t Enough
I was going through a bunch of case files. The saddest one that I picked up was a 17-year-old boy who got sent to prison for having intercourse with a 14-year-old girl. What made me sad was the way that the prosecutors manipulated the boy to procure a confession. It was one of those “if you write a nice apology letter to her parents, maybe we can make this all go away” scenarios.
He wrote a heartfelt letter that said, “I’m so sorry I put your family through this hardship, I wasn’t thinking, it was irresponsible, etc.” It had this soulless sticky note on it that just said “CONFESSED” in all caps. The kid ended up doing time.
50. 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.
51. Family Feud
I worked at a large firm that mainly did corporate law. Once, we had this pretty wealthy client who ran a bunch of "nightclubs" and "massage parlors," which were actually brothels in disguise. They also had other adult entertainment ventures. He was very professional in running his business and set up a pretty sophisticated corporate structure to pay the least amount of taxes possible.
Although he seemed as legit as possible, for all intent and purposes, he was a glorified pimp. He was also father to around 10 children, one of which would always give us trouble when we needed documents signed. My client was fed up with his son's screw-ups and wanted to settle with him to give all his equity to his other sons.
We arranged a meeting so we could discuss and define the terms of the agreement. Instead, we had a disaster. Our client and his son physically fought each other in the meeting room. Soon, my client got hit with every constitutional and administrative measure his son's lawyer could think of. I spent a whole year cleaning up my client’s mess, fighting nonsense allegations from blackmail and embezzlement to money laundering.
52. 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 n 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.
53. One Line Did Him In
I was part of the defense team for a trial in Texas. The defendant was a guy who, when he was 19, committed a theft at a Dollar General store in Houston. A few days later, he was driving through a different part of the state and got pulled over at dusk in the middle of a thunderstorm. He took off across a clearing and into some woods.
Officers chased him. On the other side of the woods was an apartment complex. He jumped up and climbed the wall. Suddenly, a shot went off. It came from his weapon from the theft. What wasn’t clear was whether he got to the top of the wall and took a shot at the closest officer, or if, as he said, the weapon fell out of his hoodie pocket as he was grabbing for it and went off randomly.
This happened in a poor, rural county at night and during a thunderstorm; therefore, the bullet was impossible to find. Hence, there was no scientific way to prove a thing besides that the arm fired. At trial, the officer's exact testimony was, "I fought in combat during Iraq and have experience being shot at. When I heard the piece go off, I had the exact same feeling as back then, so I know he fired at me." This was the end, but we didn't know it.
My co-counsel cross-examined him and said, "Have you been suffering any PTSD-related perception issues since leaving the service?" The officer froze for several seconds, looked at the prosecutor, and just said, "Do I have to answer that?" There was a big fight with us and the state about getting his records and medical history, but eventually, the judge shut it down.
The trial continued without the officer being compelled to answer, and the jury came back guilty, and he got something like a 40-year sentence from them. That one was going to appeal, as the judge should have looked at the records we wanted before denying us, saying they were irrelevant. It still blew my mind at the time that the jury was so confident based pretty much just on that sentence.
54. 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. What a loser.
55. Manners Will Get You Put Away
There was a couple that broke up, and the woman got a restraining order on the guy. A month or two later, the guy went out with his friends to some bar. Later on that same evening, the ex-girlfriend showed up at the same bar. The guy went up to her and said, "I know you have a restraining order against me. Are you comfortable with me being here, or should I leave? I won't bother you either way."
The woman said she didn’t want him around, so he left right away. It was his doom. You aren't supposed to be within 100 feet or have any contact with the person who filed a restraining order. So the fact this guy said that one sentence to her got him put away for three years, even though he was there first and trying to be courteous by asking and then leaving right away.
56. Slumlord
I helped represent a slumlord in a lawsuit regarding discrimination in public housing based on disability. The state was representing the disabled tenant. The facts were pretty clear, the slumlord discriminated on the basis of disability. However, our state doesn’t have much case law regarding discrimination in housing based on disability.
We ended up sowing enough doubt to survive the tenant’s motion for summary judgment. Knowing that the tenant needed money, we made an offer for a decent amount of money for a disabled tenant, but peanuts for the slumlord. I imagine the state wanted to proceed to trial, but the tenant desperately needed money and accepted.
By gaining the best outcome for our client, we allowed the slumlord to get off basically scot-free.
57. He Was Badgering The Witness
I sat in on a human-trafficking trial. The victim was sitting behind a screen hiding from view of the gallery, giving evidence through an interpreter while she was undergoing cross-examination by one of two defense lawyers. I sat and listened while the lawyer shot questions and accused the victim of lying about her alleged traumas.
The victim denied the accusations as best as she could. Then, the lawyer sat down and her partner, a man with a loud voice, stood and continued the questioning. The next thing I knew, the poor girl behind the screen was sobbing, and the judge was subtly reprimanding the lawyer for scaring her. The judge called a break. I served my documents and left.
I don't think I'll ever forget that trial or the way that girl cried for the rest of my life. It was heartbreaking.
58. True Story
A guy was a convicted felon so couldn’t be in possession of any arms. So he sold two firearms to a pawn shop, only for them to later traced back to him because of the store's paperwork. The felon's story was that they were his father-in-law's and that he and his girlfriend had only found them after he passed. They sold them because they wanted to get rid of them and they needed the money.
The DA office refused to waive the three-year minimum sentence, so it went to trial. I was the prosecutor for the case and ultimately I got a guilty verdict, meaning the guy had to spend three long years behind bars. I felt bad because I think his story was true. I did my job...but at what cost? A guy who made an honest mistake got locked up for three years of his life. That one keeps me up at night.
59. Her Life Was A Lie
My client got married to a college graduate who went to school on a baseball scholarship. The guy got injured, so he couldn’t work. So my client supported the guy for eight years while he dealt with the pain and collected disability. One day, my client called the guy's dad for an unrelated matter. That's when his web of lies completely unraveled.
His father told my client that the guy had never been to college, never played baseball, and was never injured. After my client confronted the guy, he took my client’s inheritance, left the state, and left his two kids with my client.
60. 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
61. Nowhere To Go
I worked for a foreclosure firm. My job, in particular, was to notice defendants and interested parties and clear titles to proceed. One case that has always stuck with me was that in the event of underage parties, we would have to notice their guardian ad litem. I had one cross my desk in which a 16-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother needed to be noticed.
This wasn’t at all too unusual, as it happened a lot with wills and such. However, in this case, it took me all day to track down their representatives so I could get the notices out. As a result of my investigation, I came to find that their father had passed on earlier that year in a car accident and their mother from a terminal illness six months after that. Let me remind you: They were being noticed as our firm needed to know who to sue to foreclose on their home.
62. Malpractice In The Court
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.
63. Nothing Is Cooking Here
The most shocking case I've ever worked on was a family court trial. The mother had an untreated mental illness, most likely severe postpartum depression, amplified by being untreated because she refused medical treatment. She testified that the father of their six-month-old daughter put the baby in the microwave one day while at home.
She said she didn't see it happen, but she knew it happened because when she picked up her daughter, her skin made the same popping sound that chicken makes after you microwave it. The father did not microwave his infant daughter.
64. 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.
65. He Maid A Big Mistake
There was a case where a maid’s son was being prosecuted for having intercourse with his 13-year-old cousin. He was an adult. The whole family got involved. Several family members came by to talk with the defense attorney. The cousin's sister even got flown in from Mexico to testify. She talked about the cousin as if she was the biggest tease on the planet.
Suffice to say, she was very aggressive with boys very early on. Basically, she really did come on to him, and the maid’s son was perhaps too naive, innocent, or weak-willed to refuse her advances, but refuse her he didn't. (But yeah, he was technically an adult.) The maid's son had so much faith in the United States justice system that he honestly believed that if he was 120% truthful, the court would see this as one massive mistake and let him walk away. That ended up being a fatal mistake.
After his testimony, the defense attorney went on about how he did not just tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him, God, but he overshared, testifying that he didn’t have relations with the girl just once. He had intercourse every which way. He even told the judge, "I put it in, but then I took it out; it felt weird." His defense attorney could not believe it.
On the one hand, the guy was just nice and good-natured and pure, almost to the point that you'd expect such pure honesty from a child. On the other hand, his attorney thought that he was "too stupid to lie." Or at least, know when to keep his mouth shut and not dig the hole any deeper. The cousin's sister, who was a similar age, sank the ship even further by saying her sister didn't have anything happen to her that would have contributed to her overly aggressive behavior.
She just is aggressive with boys. She was an early bloomer, and she loved the attention she got from older guys. And the maid's son knew this and should've known better, for that if nothing else. The maid's son was looking at 127 years. This was the first case where I'd heard them say that when he goes behind bars, to make sure that the reason he’s there doesn't get released to anyone more so than it needs to be.
They felt that if the other inmates found out, they would hurt him, as the cousin was extremely underage. Hence why he was getting the book thrown at him so hard. He ended up getting 88 years and had to register as an offender.
66. Mental Scars
This is my nastiest case by far. There was a guy in the UK who came from Zimbabwe. He lived here for three years from the age of 16 and then went abroad to serve in the British forces. When he returned from service, he got himself a girlfriend. One night, he went to her apartment and found items that would suggest she had more than one partner.
After a heated argument, she admits that she's a sex worker. He's so furious that he strangles her. He runs off to Heathrow Airport to catch the first plane to Zimbabwe and is caught by the authorities. He claimed that he had his passport on him because of pure chance, and the reason why he was going back to Zimbabwe was so he could end his own life at his grandfather's grave in shame.
The cases against him were to A) imprison him or B) boot him out of the country. He got imprisoned but we were called in for the second case as I was with an immigration firm then. We won the appeal. Twice. On the grounds that he was mentally scarred by his time in combat, his officer gave him an amazing report and that British guys with service records don't get the best treatment in Zimbabwean prisons.
Now he walks the streets as a result of good behavior. This has always been... a weird case. He was definitely supposed to have been kicked out of the country for his grievous actions. But human rights are human rights...
67. Angling To Stay
I had a client who was an extremely nice guy. He was a green card applicant and worked on a fishing boat in Alaska. When he was out on the boats fishing for crab or whatever, there was no way for anybody to communicate with him. He was out there for months at a time. Phone calls and letters aren't reaching anybody out in the middle of the Bering Strait.
One such time when he was out fishing, he got slashed all the way through the chest with a massive hook in a freak accident. Nobody stateside knew. My client was taken (somehow) to the hospital and survived, but I didn't hear from him for months. Well, the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) happens to issue this guy an interview notice, but he's nowhere to be found.
The USCIS marked him absent for his interview. I tried to reach out to him but couldn’t find him. It snowballed into a nightmare. The USCIS then denied this poor guy's case. He called me about a month later, and things had gotten worse. He tells me all about the hook on the ship but also told me that after he got home from the hospital, his wife was upset that he didn't earn her any money due to his injury.
She proceeded to beat the living daylights out of him with a baseball bat. She took all of his money and things and then left him for dead. So now, he was back in the hospital. This guy was the single most mild-mannered, nicest guy ever. I ended up putting in vast amounts of unpaid work for months to turn his application around.
We switched up his green card application and filed a self-petition through the Violence Against Women Act. We ended up getting his green card approved in what felt like a miracle, and he then went back to Alaska to happily fish and is living his best life. He still calls me once in a while, just to say hello and thank you. I'm glad he's doing better.
68. 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.
69. Superstore Sicko
There was a case where a man was at a Walmart, and the employees observed him creeping in the kid's section, taking pictures of kids in and around the dressing rooms. So they called law enforcement and confronted the man, who proceeded to flee in his car. Officers pursued him at high speed, and he rammed into the back of a semi-truck, which ended his life.
Months later, the man's family sued the trucking company, claiming the truck was improperly changing lanes which led to his demise. Given all the time and cost of taking the case to trial, the insurance company was authorized to settle the case for $50K. The attorney who represented the family said he could not believe they could get $50K for a guy running from law enforcement that ran into the back of a truck.
70. 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.
71. The High-Speed Chase
There was a case where officers were chasing a van that was speeding and driving dangerously on the freeway. The officers decided to shoot the tire to stop the van, probably so he would not cause a massive crash. One officer fired a few bullets, and they ended up stopping the van. Little did they know, the worst had already happened.
It turned out the van was filled with fleeing migrants, and one of the bullets hit the baby of a migrant couple. The baby didn’t make it. The officer was sentenced for murder.
72. Fees On Fees
I once worked on a case where, if the plaintiff won, my client (the defendant) would have to pay his accuser's attorneys’ fees. Thankfully, at trial, the judge agreed with our case and my client won. So far, so good. But then the plaintiff appeals all the way to the state’s high court, requiring a ton of briefing and time.
High court agrees with plaintiff, reverses and sends back to the trial court, which now enters judgement against the defendant for a few thousand in damages against the plaintiff, and tens and tens of thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees from the appeal. My entire firm regretted "winning" that case.
73. If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d Bake A Cake
A guy baked a cake for a couple of his friends, and without telling them, he baked some weed into it. One of the people who ate it left and got really sick. After finding out why they got sick, they took the guy to court and started a trial. This went all the way to the Supreme Court, where they decided that giving people narcotics without their knowledge was now officially considered an offense. It carries a maximum sentence of four years.
74. No Pay
When I was a young associate, I was assigned to do a civil commercial trial for a client that was not happy with the senior partner. He stopped paying. We moved to withdraw. The court refused to allow us to withdraw and forced us to go to trial. We spend a significant amount of time in trial prep., etc. I win the trial.
Client never pays. The client's position was that my boss screwed up the deal and that there never should have been a dispute/trial to begin with. Firm policy prohibits us from suing clients because that causes a drastic increase in malpractice premiums—9 times out of 10 if you sue a client for nonpayment, they will countersue for malpractice. All in all, technically I won. But the entire case was a mess and the client didn't even pay.
75. Just An Unlucky Soul
I was a clerk for a judge who was assigned to felonious cases, conservatorships, and guardianships. My first week on the job, this dude came into court looking like an absolute mess. He had bandages all over his body, an eye patch, grey hair, and was utterly expressionless. He walked in with his hands and legs chained up after sitting in solitary for 30 days.
I thought he must have done something serious. It turns out it was just a hearing to determine whether the state should be the guy's official guardian. He had been taken in for burglary after he broke into an apartment building. While waiting for arraignment, he tried to pluck out his eyeball, and thankfully, failed. He was sent to the hospital, then just sent back to the facility.
The next day, he heard voices in his hand, and he tried to peel the skin from the palm of his hand using a broken plastic spoon. He partially succeeded. He continued trying to cut off the skin from his arms and legs, sometimes scratching or biting himself, and he, unfortunately, caused numerous severe injuries to himself. Keep in mind this was all in the county cell.
At his arraignment, his public defenders told another judge his story and he was immediately sent for a mental evaluation and his case was handed to my judge. In the meantime, he sat rotting for weeks in a cell "under watch" because there were no beds available in the actual mental hospital. He was nice to the judge and just an unlucky soul.
He was finally committed to the state mental hospital, which meant he displaced another patient.
76. Accumulating Bills
I won a summary judgment motion that my firm fully expected to lose. We had a decent argument, but odds were stacked against us. For the uninitiated, a summary judgement motion is a time in the lawsuit when each side thinks they know all the facts there are to discover about the claim and the various defenses that will be brought up.
One party (usually the defendant) says, "Based on all these facts, even if they're true, I still win because plaintiff can't prove his case." You file a motion asking the judge to review all the facts. This is not a trial and doesn't have witnesses. It's all done on paper, reviewing expert reports or witnesses' under oath deposition testimony, taken usually months prior.
You ask the judge to say, "Yes all these things are true, but it is not enough to show a violation of the law, party filing the motion wins." And you do not proceed to a trial. Do not pass go. Do not collect your contingency fee. That's a lawyer joke...a contingency fee is what sometimes winning lawyers get paid only when they win.
Anyway, the client initially was thrilled. Case is over—we tried to break the news gently... nope. Three years later we're back in the same spot we were before we "won" our motion. The other side appealed it up to the state supreme court and won. So, we are back at square one. North of $100k in bills for his lawyer, with no resolution. Maybe it'll settle, maybe it will go to trial.
77. Caution, Contents Hot!
A woman sued McDonald's for burning herself when she spilled her coffee. The cups McDonald's used at the time were prone to spilling, and their coffee was brewed way too hot. It was significantly hotter than any other fast food place that brewed coffee. The spill resulted in the woman having severe burns. Upon reviewing similar occurrences, she found out that dozens, if not hundreds of people had had similar experiences, resulting in permanent injury and substantial medical expenses.
McDonald's was aware of this and refused to brew at a lower temperature or use better cups used by other fast food places. The woman did not request an excessive amount of money, either. All she wanted was for McDonald's to splurge on better cups and/or brew their coffee at a lower temperature and to pay enough to help cover the medical bills of people who had been affected.
78. 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.
79. The Sign Says No Trespassing Dude
There was a bench trial for a trespassing charge. A guy went into some sort of low-income housing owned by the city or state. He went into the complex and started yelling at someone, and was taken in for trespassing. There were only two witnesses, the guy, and the arresting officer. The officer testified first for the prosecution. The defense attorney was a public defender.
It seemed like it was a slam dunk case, and both sides were going through the motions. The officer gave his side of the story about the guy walking past no trespassing signs, yelling at someone, and refusing to leave. The defendant got on the stand, and the guy reaffirmed everything the officer said. When asked if he saw the no trespassing sign, he said he did.
He also admitted that he was aware he needed permission to enter the premises and wouldn’t leave when asked to do so. The public defender just had this look of defeat on his face. Finally, both sides had their closing arguments, and it went to the judge. But there was a twist. The judge read over the law out loud and engaged the two lawyers in a discussion.
The hang-up was that the law said that a person could not trespass and prohibit the enjoyment of the complex by others. They discussed the "prohibit the enjoyment of the complex by others" a bit between the three of them, and then the prosecutor tried to toss in some more arguments, which the judge shut down. The judge found the guy not guilty because no one proved that he prohibited anyone from enjoying the complex.
The judge told the defendant that he was fortunate this time and to stay away from that place.
80. 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."
81. Redeem This!
There was a hearing for a guy who shot an officer. His defense lawyer put together a reasonably compelling case that the guy just hit a bad spot in his life and that he still had some redeemable qualities. Then the guy stood up, looked the judge straight in the eye, and told him to "suck a dick." The judge, being a man of the world, simply stared right back at him, smiled, and said, “Sir, I respectfully decline.”
Needless to say, he got the maximum sentence handed down, and his lawyer just buried his head in his hands.
82. Hard Business
I had this happen to me twice. Got my client out on bail, only for him to leave the court and immediately get attacked so brutally that he didn't survive. The first time, my client got chased by law enforcement, then a struggle ensued, and my client ended up with a bullet in the head. His mother told me that it was my fault that it happened. The second time, a young man no more than 16 years old got released while awaiting his trial.
One of the conditions of release was that he maintain a curfew. The exact same night that he got bail, my client broke curfew, went over to somebody else’s house and lost his life in a substance-related theft. The mother blamed me and said that the devil was working through me and that we were all demons. Not my best days on the job.
83. The Third Case Was A Charm
I was in court a few years back and had the chance to see a few different trials. Three of them stood out, including one where some guy set fire to a store. He was found at a nearby station with a butcher knife in hand. He said that he merely found it there. He started crying in front of the judge. Then, when he was leaving the courtroom, he smiled at us on his way out.
84. Last One Standing
There was a high-profile case in our city. An entire family, who was living in poverty, was slaughtered, with only one individual remaining. This family had a laundry list of weird stuff going on. The father lived in a caravan, the eldest daughter was turning tricks, and it was rumored the father was sleeping with the daughter.
The sole survivor was convicted and then had his conviction overturned a year before he was due for parole due to bad chains of evidence on some items and officers moving a couple of items before taking photos of the scene. It was believed he did it but got off on some technicalities. He then got remarried and lived in a different country.
85. Too Close For Comfort
I'm going to sound like a busybody, but I am concerned with my co-worker and her boyfriend sleeping naked with her breast-fed seven-year-old. Now she's getting ready to pull her out of public school because her teacher is questioning why the girl is smart but acts like a much younger child. This co-worker of mine is beautiful and very popular, but in my opinion is taking this hippie thing entirely too far.
Her daughter is smart enough but constantly reverting to acting like a toddler; she's doing it more than she acts her age. I support extended breastfeeding but this is getting weird. We work at a health food store, like we are talking major crunchy granola. So, once she let it slip that they all sleep naked in bed together. I honestly do not think they are creepy at all, but as liberal as I am, that's still getting weird at her age.
I've always minded my own business, however, but now that she's saying she's going to pull the girl out of the public school because the classroom teacher is starting to question the emotional development of the child, my spidey senses are tingling. Do I mind my own business or make a discreet phone call to CPS? No way in heck would I discuss the matter with her; she's on one heck of an ego trip.
One last detail: another co-worker's daughter spent the night at their house and they had both girls running around naked, which would not have been cool with the girl's conservative mom.
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86. Revolting Reverends
Before I was admitted to the bar, I worked as a paralegal on a number of high-profile historic cases involving minors, mostly defending priests. Some of the details were pretty confronting. Our law firm represented three of four priests accused over a period of a few years and in different matters. The worst I can recall was not a particular case, but one specific victim of several priests from different schools and years during the 1970s or early 80s.
This victim wasn’t even a party to proceedings; instead, it was other victims. His name just happened to pop up in all of these witness statements from other victims and in official records. He was passed around within different Catholic boys’ schools from one violator to the next. His parents didn’t believe him, but other students would try to protect him and one another by reporting it to local authorities on various occasions.
The authorities didn’t follow up or investigate for years, despite several children and some parents complaining. It was horrible to read very detailed accounts of the pattern of grooming and escalating such mistreatment that would occur and how it was so easily tied to faith and desire to please God, but also to see how these informal networks of violators operated within the Catholic school system to affect so many children.
He developed behavioral issues, drinking and substance dependence issues, and other health problems like many others. It was a stark reminder of how easily people can fall through the cracks and be failed by the people empowered and entrusted to protect them when they are vulnerable.
87. The Shirt Off Her Back
My grandmother, who is 91 with severe dementia, was charged $13,000 for five pieces of clothes at a strip mall in West Palm Beach, Florida. We have limited the amount of money she can spend (she wrote checks for the clothes) and so the checks bounced. I have contacted the store owners who sent a “receipt” for her purchases that is hand-written on a piece of paper (no store business information) and just says “dress $4,000” and “skirt $3,000,” etc.
I strongly suspect that the owner just made up these prices that normally sold for MUCH less and my grandmother was incapable of discerning any of this. My grandmother can't drive and has a full-time caregiver who was with her and did nothing to stop this. The owner is now asking me to pay what is “owed” on the clothes. I feel so stuck and angry right now.
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88. Hidden Treasures
I’m an international tax lawyer. There is so much Holocaust money that has remained hidden in Swiss and other European and global banks by families who immigrated to America after WWII. The families were so scared of disclosing the funds to ANY government that it remained unreported and untaxed. We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. I help bring it back into the system through IRS amnesty programs. It’s much, much more common than you’d think.
89. There Can Only Be One
My boss is forcing all the employees to permanently delete their LinkedIn accounts. He’s threatening to terminate anyone who does not comply with this new policy. He’s adding it to the company handbook and to new hire offer letters, and he’s offering a monetary bonus to anyone who voluntarily shows proof of account deletion. He says he feels that employees that have these accounts are “cheating” on him, since he recently lost an employee and blames LinkedIn. Going to go to HR with this one.
90. Emotions Finally Take Precedent
There was a mom who was cooking dinner. From where she was standing, she could see her child playing outside. Suddenly a taxi van drove in the street and hit the child at quite a high speed. This sent the child flying through the air. When she hit the ground, she had a lot of momentum, so she slid over the street. The mother, obviously in shock, ran up to the child.
When the mother grabbed her child, her hand vanished in the back of her child’s head. This was the first case ever in Dutch law where emotional damages were accepted.
91. Snap Attack
I was attacked in a dog park by a pit bull. The dog park is an enclosed area where owners are supposed to watch their dogs off-leash, and the attack was classified as a level one trauma. I arrived at the dog park before noon with my two dogs. The dog was being aggressive towards my dog, a puppy. Before this, they were dry humping each other.
I went to lift my dog to prevent a situation but the pit bull turned on me. The last thing I remember is it closing in on me, then I remember me being on the ground covered in dirt and mauled for like three entire minutes. He locked on two of my limbs. Ripped my face apart, and left my dog for dead. I tried so hard to defend him and myself but this dog overpowered the both of us.
I was rushed to the emergency room. I almost went into cardiac arrest from what a nurse told me. I wasn’t aware of the extent of my injuries but I couldn’t see from my left eye. A few days later, I woke up and found out. Several of my nerves have been severed from this attack. Since it was an emergency procedure, the medical cost is exponential.
Right now I’m working every hour I can, I’m in counseling, and I find it hard to be anywhere in public where dogs can be alone. I cannot go into the sun because my face scars darken so easily. And my self-confidence has been ruined. Is there any way the dog owner (I know who she is) can be responsible for the medical fees I’m faced with?
92. I Swear The Water’s Safe
A couple of years back, there was a case where a well-known manufacturer of latex paints was found to be destroying a local wetland with runoff. The state authority in charge of wetlands preservation took them to court. In a grandstanding effort to demonstrate to the judge that the chemical being discharged near the water could not possibly be toxic to the wildlife, a representative for the company brought a powdered form of the chemical into court.
They mixed it with a glass of water there and then, intending to drink it dramatically in front of the court. It backfired so, so badly. The glass, which was plastic, melted right there on the table. The case was settled out of court the same day.
93. Hair Today
My little sister, who is 13 years old, recently decided to use hydrogen peroxide to dye her hair light brown. When my mom learned about it she flipped, and after she and my dad screamed at my sister for a bit, they completely shaved her head...All her hair. Gone. They've always been emotionally abusive and treated me and my siblings badly, but this is the final straw.
I'm hesitant to really try and do something about it and make my parents mad at me, because obviously they could make my life really miserable, but I’m considering some kind of emancipation.
94. Who Is This Woman?
We had a client who claimed to be the daughter of a man, but his other daughter claimed that wasn’t true. The man’s estate went to probate court, and they both had rival petitions going to the administrator. In the state of California, you get money to be an administrator, along with your share of the estate. She was a nut.
My boss regretted taking her on. As it went on, she got crazier and crazier. She tried to exhume the body. She broke into the man’s house to “gather evidence” and sent us on a wild goose chase to family members in Arkansas who would vouch for her. A month later, we got a call from our client. Law enforcement was outside her house. She was barricaded in and was holding a gun to her husband.
She wouldn’t come out and kept calling our office to talk to her attorney, who wasn’t in on that day. I was talking to her and watching law enforcement on the news at the same time. She ended up firing on her husband, not taking his life but leaving him in a vegetable state, before going behind bars. Never found out if she was the real daughter or not.
95. Trip The Light
We're in a small neighborhood of about five homes. It's a very small cul-de-sac area in the middle of farmland. There aren't other homes or buildings for about two miles. I have three young, elementary-aged children that all have a very serious case of epilepsy. It does not take much to cause an episode. By some luck, two of our neighbor's kids also have epilepsy, and are also around the same age as our kids.
For the past few years they have been able to successfully group together and go to the end of our community to catch the bus. The family who used to own the house at the street recently moved out, and there is a new owner who has been an absolute jerk to everyone. From the second day on, he has harassed our kids, telling them to get off his property, even though they were technically on a public road.
Through the grapevine he somehow learned that a majority of the kids were epileptic. His response was utterly chilling. He has now installed strobe lights on his front lawn. These are VERY powerful, VERY fast lights that you cannot avoid walking by. We've contacted the authorities but they won't even come out to talk to the guy.
We've contacted the school to see if they could come into the neighborhood to pick up our kids, and they really can't. The bus just couldn't drive into our neighborhood and easily back out. They have to be picked up on the street. So, yeah, we are now going to have to go to court over this, and I am so so enraged. This guy is gonna get everything that's coming to him.
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96. Case Of The Missing Kitty
I was pretty new to a practice and was meeting with a lot of clients. The firm I worked for had a lot of walk-ins, and I was processing potential clients. When I called in the next person, a woman in her mid-30s walked in carrying a red and white cooler. She popped in down on my desk and then spent about five minutes trying to sit down in the chair.
My first thought was that she must have some kind of personal injury. The first words out of her mouth shocked me. After she sat down, she said, "I need to sue my doctor because my vagina just fell out." My eyes immediately locked onto the cooler. I asked, "Is...that it?" She responded, "Yes. I brought it in with me just in case you needed to see it. Do you want to see it?"
She began to open the cooler. I was definitely curious, but I stopped her and convinced her that a hospital was her best option at the moment. It turned out that she had reconstruction surgery, and the surgical mesh had dropped out. I was a corporate attorney, so this was not my area of expertise. I sent her to someone with more experience.
97. Back Breaking Work
My ex-husband and his new wife made my daughter a back brace out of wood and steel and forced her to wear it. Yes, really. But the details are even more horrific. My daughter is nine and my ex-husband and I share custody by alternating weeks. My daughter says her back hurts now and her arm is tingling. I have a doctor’s appointment for her on Monday and in the meantime I am trying to remain calm.
I confronted my ex-husband about it and all he would say was one text message where he says his new wife didn't like how my daughter slouched at the dinner table. They aren’t doctors and there’s nothing wrong with her that she needs a brace. I wanted to find a way I can get a quick court date or see a judge because I didn't want her going back there.
One of my co-workers has a cousin who is a lawyer and she knew someone who was able to help me and file the paperwork. My husband played dumb in court but his visits got reduced to supervised and he was ordered to take a parenting class. My daughter went to physiotherapy. Eventually, the court reinstated his visitation when he swore he had learned his lesson and was sorry and with his otherwise clean record the court agreed. This was a huge mistake.
I was against it but the court ruled against me. In any case, I gave my daughter her own cell phone so she could call me whenever she needed to. On her second visit, it happened again. This time the brace had steel and fabric instead of wood and they took her phone too. The next night, she left when they weren't looking and went up the street to a neighbor who is an officer.
The neighbor called paramedics and her co-workers. They had to cut the brace off my daughter. My husband and his wife were arrested. They got out quickly but they have been charged and their infant is with CPS. My ex lost visitation and custody and I'm working on making it permanent. Unfortunately, my daughter's shoulder was dislocated from the brace.
It sent her back to rehab and part of her arm is still numb and tingling. She needed surgery and is still recovering. She always played sports (especially at school) and did dance but the doctor thinks she won't ever be able to lift her arm all the way up again. I hate my ex and he'll see her again over my corpse. Right now I'm focusing on my daughter while my lawyer takes care of things.
98. Say No To The Dress
Me and this guy were together for three years, and we're 19 now. We never talked about the future until a year in. Before then, I'd try to discuss it and he would change the subject. In short, I wanted kids, he didn't. I wanted to stay in Ireland, he didn't. I wanted to get married, he didn't. When I realized it was a bad match, I broke it off but he asked to get back together, saying we were too young to worry about the future.
We got back together. This happened a few times over the next 18 months, and in this time we probably spent more time apart than together. We knew early on that we wanted different things, and while marriage and kids are something I would want further down the line, I wasn't concerned about his open dislike of marriage and kids because 19 is too young to get married anyway.
If I were dating him 10 or 15 years from now and he didn't want to get married, then I might have an issue, but when I'm barely out of my teens, it's not a huge concern, and just loving him and wanting to be with him is enough. Still, when I went to see him this time I was again considering breaking up with him. Aside from the long-term issues, he is also inconsiderate and has a mean streak that I really don't like.
So when I arrived at his place, mentally debating breaking up with him for good this time, and he told me he wanted to take me out to dinner, I assumed he wanted to break up too, and publicly so I wouldn't cause a scene. I don't normally cause a scene, but being in public tends to prevent yelling, and we both yell every time we break up. I found out too late what was going on.
In the last year he has asked me two things that looking back now stand out to me. First he asked about jewellery, what kind of stuff I liked and what my taste was. I assumed it was because my birthday was coming up and he was getting me a bracelet or something, so I told him simple and delicate, silver or steel rather than gold, if there was a color then blue, nothing flashy or expensive as both my job prefers plain jewellery and it's just my personal preference.
I also said "go cheap.” The other thing he asked me was how I felt about public proposals. I told him immediately that I, personally, disliked them as I felt I wouldn't be able to say no, even if I wanted to. I feel like public proposals are OK when they've been specifically requested and agreed on, but one that's totally out of the blue is not OK at all.
I assumed he was asking about this because his friend had just proposed to his girlfriend of several years, publicly, and she'd accepted but admitted to him after that she would have preferred something private. I never thought in a million years that he would propose. So you can imagine my shock when we went to dinner and the first thing he did was propose. Oh, but that wasn't all.
The ring was huge, gold, gaudy, with red gems around a diamond and the whole thing was the size and shape of a super bowl ring. He got on one knee and held it out to me. We were in the middle of this popular restaurant and the place was packed. Everyone there could see what was going on and weren't even trying to hide that they were looking at us.
I said no. Well, I didn't so much say "no," it was a much worse reaction than that. I ran out of the restaurant. He drove me there, so I got a cab back and drove home that night. I realize running out wasn't the best thing to do but I didn't know what else to do. I could feel everyone's eyes on me, and all I knew was that I didn't want to marry him or accept his proposal.
I felt like I couldn't even speak, I was so upset about the whole thing. So I just got up and ran. I just want to take the opportunity to say here that I really, really don't care about the ring. Honestly, when I want to get married (which is absolutely not when I'm 19 years old) the right person could just turn to me and say "wanna get married?" and I'd say yes.
I wouldn't even need a ring. I know I'm focusing on the ring and the public proposal a lot, but that's only because of 1) how far away it was from what I'd told him my taste was and 2) what happened next. Because what happened next was horrible. I didn't hear from him until a few weeks later. At that point, he said that he thought a proposal was something I'd want, but he saw now that it wasn't.
He then said that he was out of pocket for the rings. He'd bought us both the same one and gotten them engraved. He linked me to the jeweller's website and the ring was up for $1,650. When I asked why he was telling me this, he said that he'd hoped I would cover the cost of mine. He said that as they'd been engraved he couldn't get a refund.
He'd hoped that I would say yes to the proposal, in which case he wouldn't have asked me to pay, but I said no. He also said I'd embarrassed him by saying no in public, and should have said yes, and if I was really against it I should have waited to say no when we were alone. See, we both live in small towns where gossip spreads at Church.
Enough people were at the restaurant that night that both of us got asked about it at Church on Sunday. He has since messaged me saying he's debating calling in a lawyer to sue me for the cost of my ring, and he also says that I have caused him "emotional distress" by turning him down in public, and have publicly humiliated him for both rejecting his proposal in public and leaving him to deal with Church gossip, which I had no part in spreading.
I think his claims are ridiculous, and he wouldn't have a leg to stand on in a court of law, but I am not a law student or a lawyer. He knew I wanted to get married but not to him. He not only knew this but said he had no intention of marrying me either. He openly despised marriage right up until the time he proposed, where suddenly he's all about it.
He knows that we want different things out of marriage, and I told him that this was why I was breaking up with him the times before this that I have ended the relationship. But there is a kicker in all of this. His mother has reached out to me apologizing for her son's actions. She has said that nothing will come of this and that she raised an idiot.
99. X-Ray Vision
There was a case where a client had radiation burns from an X-ray machine. In the avalanche of documents received from the defendant during discovery, there was an internal memo. This one piece of paper cracked the whole case. The memo described a serious problem with the machines and continued, "This is an issue we can't ignore. Unfortunately, it's not in the budget.”
When the case went to trial, we told the jury, "Show them they need to put this in the budget next time." The jury complied, handing down one of the largest verdicts California had ever seen.
100. Park It
I rent an apartment, and an assigned exterior parking space within my complex’s parking lot is included in my rent. I have a parking pass that I display in my car, and documentation from my landlord stating that this specific spot belongs to me. However, I have a neighbor that always parks in my spot. I have contacted my landlord every time this happens asking him to handle it, but nothing ever happens.
I have also kept a log of every time I notice this neighbor in my spot and when I’ve contacted my landlord. For what it’s worth, the neighbor does not have a visible parking pass on his car, and also puts a cone in my spot when he’s gone to reserve it, so I don’t think this is just confusion. I don’t think he owns a spot at all. This past weekend, it went from annoying to mind-blowing.
Said neighbor had my car towed from my spot. I confronted him in person, but all he did was claim that the spot was his. I once again contacted my landlord, who stated that this spot was indeed mine, I shouldn’t have been towed, and he would speak with my neighbor to reiterate that it is my spot. Well, apparently the neighbor didn’t listen, because last night he was in my spot again.
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