I'm not an attorney, and it wasn't in front of a judge, But I got into a dispute with a contractor who f**ked up royally when installing anew heating system, resulting in an asbestos contamination of my house.

Their insurance argued the contractor couldn't have caused the contamination, because the contamination was way worse than could have been possible from what the contractor did (which is bulls**t). They argued the contamination must have been caused by the contractor that installed the previous heating system.

It was super satisfying to write our response:

The previous heating system was placed 12 years earlier. The asbestos dust was visibly lying everywhere. Arguing we didn't vacuum for 12 years was beyond ridiculous.

The asbestos dust was on a floor we installed 6 months earlier (included the receipt for the floor).

And then the third point was the most fun to write:

3) I said they were welcome to believe the contamination was caused by the contractor who installed the previous system 12 years ago. I included the receipt of that installation: it was done by the same contractor.

The next letter was very brief, stating they would pay us fir all damages we were claiming.

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Zoe's Mom

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Bazinga.

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Late to the party, but I'll chime in anyway. My firm had been chasing down this woman for years, trying to get her to pay out on a six figure judgment. She kept nothing in her personal bank accounts and used the money for her business accounts for a rather lavish lifestyle. She kept claiming she was broke and that she didn't use her company funds for her living expenses, including in affidavits filed with the court. During the citation deposition, at the beginning, she stated she was current on her mortgage for her huge house. We go through all her finances and companies and after a few hours I brought up the mortgage again and then asked "if you're broke, but current on your mortgage, how are you making mortgage payments?" Dead silence, then in a soft voice "I use company funds." Her attorney stopped the deposition and pulled her out of the conference room. My boss was observing and started laughing and told me it was a good question.

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Random Anon

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I hate to be the evil one here but if you want to remain "broke" and still "owned" your home. Sell it to your company for chump change. But do not lose control of said company though.

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My brother went to court to gain some custody rights of his daughter. Ex-wife says he shouldn't be allowed to be alone with the daughter cuz he looks at porn. The judge, who happened to be a woman, laughed and said, "honey, if every man who looked at porn wasn't allowed to see their children then there would be no child with a daddy in this world".

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Kai David

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I come from money. My family has money, but its their money. Not mine. I bought a house prior to my marriage, but it was a rental property, never ment to be my residence. I moved back to the states with 3 sons and my wife. LSS we moved into the house, 7 bed, 3 bath; we divorced when we found out I was gay. (arranged marriage back in the olde country). Ugly divorce. She wanted custody and my house AND she based child support on my family's money, not my income. She had no job, no family or support system, no place to live. She told the judge that women always gets to keep the house and custody of kids after divorce and the $65,000 a month of child support, she will be fine. At the time, I made $75,000 a year . Judge asked where she came up with that number, she told judge that it was based on my family's money, not my income. I kept the house and custody, no child support from her I did buy her a house. When she realized she was not getting the money, she left.

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I was a second year associate and handling my first trial. I represented the plaintiff. The defendant had an expert witness who had testified previously in about 40 similar cases. This expert came out to my client's property and did a completely bulls**t examination of the issue and his expert report was equally as bulls**t. For those of you that don't know, expert testimony needs to meet a certain standard (the Daubert standard, at least in my state) in order to be admissible. This guy basically took some photos and put a ruler on the ground a few times to make his "report" seem legit.

The partners at my firm told me it wasn't worth trying to file a Daubert motion to strike his report/testimony because the case was low value (under $100k) and those types of motions can be very complex, and didnt want to bill the client for it. I was so angry about this guy being deemed an "expert" that i came in on a weekend, on my own time, and drafted a 20 page motion to strike his testimony. I didn't bill the client a dime.

The defendant didn't file a response to my Daubert motion to strike. Instead, they waited until right before the expert was set to testify (he had been sitting in court racking up fees for two full days beforehand). The judge had the jury leave the room, put the expert on the stand, and allowed the defendant to do a direct examination of their expert. The defendant's attorney, not taking my motion seriously, had their inexperienced associate (just like me) do the examination. It was incredibly basic and didn't respond to any of the points in my motion. I was in charge of doing his cross exam (it was my first cross exam of a witness, ever). I tore the guy, a seasoned expert witness, apart on the stand. I got his entire testimony and report struck.

They also had a second expert witness, who was pretty terrible but not quite as terrible. I also did his cross exam. Realizing that they were in serious trouble without their primary expert, and their second expert at risk of getting struck, the lead counsel for the defendant (a named partner at a well known firm) did the direct exam for the second expert. I again did the cross. I got the second expert's testimony struck except for one very, very tiny area. So essentially he was forced to testify with both hands tied behind his back.

It was the most gratifying moment of my legal career so far.

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Albo alt

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Did you win?

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Not a lawyer, but this is my favorite story in traffic court.

I got a ticket for going 75 mph on I-88 (Near Chicago)

The Officer wrote on the ticket I was going 88 mph on I-75. (Detroit south to Miami, not near Chicago)

I show up wearing a suit, because I have one suit, and I may as well wear it.

Judge calls on me asking me if I'm a lawyer. I say I am not, but I get to go first because I'm the only one in a suit.

Judge looks at the ticket, says 'You were going 88 on I-75? Officer X, what does this ticket say? Isn't I-75 out of our jurisdiction?'

At this point I open my mouth, and shut it, because I have the right to remain silent, may as well show the ability to be silent as well.

Officer says 'Your honor, at my age I have no idea what I wrote'.

Judge gives him a look, and throws my license back at me, in the plastic bag, says 'you are free to go'.

Always wear a suit to traffic court.

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Ogre Juan

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'Your honor, at my age I have no idea what I wrote'. Admission Of Senile Incomitance

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Opposing counsel decided that I had coached my witness and gave him lines to repeat, that he was lying. Short version is that he asked the witness if he spoke to me before he testified. Witness said he had. Attorney looked like he thought he had me. Attorney asked the witness what I told him, what instructions I gave him. Witness looked him dead in the eye and said, “First thing he told me was to tell the truth no matter what. He said the lawyer is never the one who goes to jail, that he isn’t going to jail for me, and if I lie, I’m on my own.” Attorney looked like someone took the air out of him. Everyone in the courtroom simultaneously looked at me. Only time I’ve smirked or laughed in court. I wanted to put my feet up on the table like I was Vincent LaGuardia Gambini, hands behind my head, and say, “I’m done with this guy.”

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Phil Boswell

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Good ol' Vinnie ❣

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So, picture it: mother and father are in a custody dispute. Mother's not making a lot of money but she's hustling as best as she can to take care of her kids. Father's a deadbeat. He actually was supposed to originally have primary custody, but skipped out, so she's been taking care of them for a couple years, and now she wants primary custody officially transferred to her and he's fighting it because he's a narcissist...

Anyways. In many jurisdictions, in addition to the lawyer for each side (assuming that the person isn't arguing pro se, like the father in this case, because not everyone can afford a lawyer, or thinks that they need one) when there's a child involved the court appoints a guardian ad litem, who represents the child. The guardian ad litem interviews the parents, interviews the child, does some basic investigating, and reports to the judge about their assessment. In this case, the guardian ad litem said outright that the mother was probably the better bet, but he thinks that both parents should take a drug test just in case. (Both parents had previous substance abuse problems, and both claimed to be clean.)

Well, the judge has no problem with any of that that, and sends the parents off to be tested right then (social services sent someone to administer the tests, I believe). That's done, everybody comes back to the courtroom.

Judge reads the results out loud. Mother tested negative for everything. Father...tested positive for cocaine.

Now, as the mother's attorney (and the guardian ad litem) made sure to emphasize, cocaine doesn't stay detectable for very long. Either the father used it very recently (he admitted in court that he'd gone to a party and done a line of coke), or he was such a habitual user that it remained detectable for longer (the party that he'd been at was the previous weekend, which was outside of the approx. 3 day range that cocaine remains in your system, so if that was indeed the only time he'd used coke then he must have been doing lines nonstop the week before for it to linger so long).

Things really did not go well for him after that. Mother ended up with primary custody of the kids, father ended up looking like a real tool in front of the judge.

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IeabellAlakar@aqueenofaplanet

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Some helpful advice- Poppy seeds can make a false positive, don't eat them before any appointment. You never know when drug tests will be administered.

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Not a lawyer, recent law school grad studying for the bar. This happened summer after my first year of law school, I was making a court appearance as a student attorney (basically, a rule in my state that lets students practice under attorney supervision).

I was working with the public defender’s office, representing a client at a first appearance on a probation violation/bail hearing. On a probation violation, the judge is allowed to hold a defendant without bail (keep them in jail until the case is over).

Client says he has some money, but not much. Could get together about $500 for bail. Ok, I’ll ask the judge to keep it low or just release him. Prosecutor asks for $300 bail. Great, my work here is done. Whatever I say, judge will order $300 or less and my guy is out.

I say my piece, and then my client interrupts the judge, saying some incoherent stuff about how he needs to get out and he’s got this that and the other thing going on. Won’t let the judge speak.

Judge holds him without bail even though the prosecutor didn’t ask for it. All he had to do was shut up and he’d have gone home that afternoon.

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Andy Acceber

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NEVER talk over a judge. You may think the judge is the biggest idiot in the world -- and they may be -- but they have an incredible about of discretionary power over you. Suck up. Be humble. Be kind. And if there are issues, talk to your lawyer outside the courtroom to push for a retrial or appeal.

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The defendant tried to b**** slap one of the jury.

soiseeadog-hmmm , Tingey Injury Law Firm Report

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Libstak

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How did the defendant get anywhere near any of the jury?

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My dear, departed bf was a criminal defense attorney who told me this one:

Attorney (cross-examination): "You were dating my client, Eddie X, and your then-boyfriend, Mr Z, and became pregnant. How did you know that the baby was not my client's child"

Witness: "Because Eddie always f***** me up the ass!"

Order! Order!

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ZAPanda

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but of course she could get pregnant still: how do you think lawyers are conceived?? (joke)

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I once had an idiot client who put out a public statement announcing that a subordinate had resigned.

Then the subordinate announced that he had not resigned, and furthermore, had no intention of resigning.

Then my idiot client put out an email announcing that he had fired the subordinate.

Then I had to advise my idiot client that he didn't have the right to fire the subordinate.

Then I had to explain to my idiot client that he couldn't fire the man because he is not my idiot client's subordinate at all; in fact, he was hired by, and worked for, a completely different subsidiary - over which my client had no authority.

So I got my idiot client to put out a public statement saying that his boss, the Chief Executive, had fired the subordinate.

Then my idiot client's boss blabbed to everybody that he had not fired the subordinate, and that he had thrown the whole matter back into my idiot client's hands.

And now, dammit, I have to spend the next four months boning up on all the statues and case law pertaining to obstruction of justice.

Sincerely, William Barr's lawyer.

theartfulcodger , Tingey Injury Law Firm Report

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Two_rolling_black_eyes

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That took an extremely sharp turn in the last 4 words. I've followed the case and didn't recognize it because of the vagueness until the end. William Barr is the former US Attorney General accused of all of the above. The chief executive was Trump.

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This was in a custody dispute, jury trial. We represented the father of young twins, and the mother wanted child support. The issue was that, for the past three years, they had been sharing the kids EXACTLY 50-50, as in he got a weekend, she got a weekend, one of them got Monday Tuesday, the other got Thursday Friday, and they split Wednesday. There was no reason not to have a shared custody order with each parent paying their own expenses, but she thought she could get more, so there we were.

The thing was, she did not have a case. She kept taking the kids to CPS and child psychologists before the trial to make a reason why she should have primary custody, but we managed to get all of that excluded.

So on the day of the trial, her big argument is that these kids have asthma. Severe asthma. The kind of asthma that requires special equipment, and the father is ignoring these issues. He's negligent. He's endangering them. She should have custody.

The trial is generally going our way. She's not a great witness, she doesn't have any medical records to back up these allegations, and we have the children's daycare teacher testifying that she doesn't know anything about any special equipment or severe asthma. But the moment that sealed the deal came when the mother called her last witness.

The last witness to testify was the children's grandmother, the mother's mother. The jury already knew that she frequently babysat the two kids, and that her apartment was often a drop-off location for the kids. The mother swore that the grandmother never smoked in front of the kids, and that her apartment was not a dangerous environment for asthmatic children. The grandmother was called last minute by the mother as a rebuttal witness.

As she took the stand, the grandmother leaned over into the microphone and cleared her throat.

"Ahecchhhmm."

It was a two or three second long expression of smoky phlegm. I don't recall exactly what the grandmother said in her testimony, but I remember she sounded like decades of three-pack-a-day smoking when she said it.

After a half-hour of deliberations, the jury awarded primary custody to the father. He immediately started crying, while the mother sat motionless. It was a good result.

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Zoe's Mom

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I feel this one for some reason. Fathers, in many cases, are seen as the bad guy. Obviously, this man loves his children immensely. I'm happy it went his way.

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When I was in law school, I had to argue a case for an exam. I was the last in my class to go so there wasn't anyone arguing against me. I opened with a motion to dismiss since opposing had failed to show. The judge grading me chuckled and said "touche counsel." I still had to go forward but we got off on the right foot and I ended up with an A.

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Anna Snorrepot

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that's a nice one :D

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Back in the days when you needed to bring posterboard blow ups of photos with you to court as exhibits, and you didn't have a computer screen to enlarge them, in a fire case the defendant said he and his family were in Mexico buying tiles and went straight to their home in Beverly Hills. They claimed they didn't stop in Malibu at their beach house to drop off the tiles, have a smoke, and then leave. (Our theory was their cigarettes started the fire. LA County Arson thought so too.)

Up until the day of trial we didn't have the blow ups. I got them. They were huge, I took them to court. I asked the defendant husband to repeat the story he had given in deposition. Then I uncovered the blow up which showed his garage with the door left open by LA County firefighters. The garage was untouched by the fire that burned down his house and the neighborhood. I showed him the photo and asked him to identify the tiles neatly stacked in the middle of the garage. When he failed to answer the question I knew the jury knew he was lying. (He was, as we say in the profession, a "LSOS.")

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Megan Johnson

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LSOS ?

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Was waiting with now exwife in divorce court. Ours was mostly mutual so it was somewhat painless.

The couple before us was an older divorced couple arguing over back child support.

HER: "He has not paid me in 3 months. I gave him an extension but still nothing"

HIM: "I don't have any money right now, times are tough. Im trying the best I can"

HER: "You honor ask him where he was 2 weeks ago?"

JUDGE: "Where were you 2 weeks ago"

HIM: "I went to Florida and got remarried on the beach"

Bailiff: "CLICK. CLICK". {The guy was hauled away in cuffs}.

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IeabellAlakar@aqueenofaplanet

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I'm sorry your marriage didn't work out.

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Very abbreviated - I was prosecuting a convenience store owner for luring a young girl, who regularly came into the store, back to a part of the store to grope/fondle and kiss her (child enticement). It was the only section of the store without surveillance camera coverage. They were in the back room for about two minutes and seventeen seconds, per the timestamp on the videos. Of the many arguments the defense put on, one was there was no way there was enough time for anything to happen. In my rebuttal on closing, I asked the jury to imagine what could happen in the room in that amount of time, and I asked them to all close their eyes while I timed out 2 minutes and 17 seconds on my watch, in silence. After about 60 seconds two of the jurors started crying. Knew it was going to be guilty right then.

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Jo Johannsen

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I have seen this before. At random moments, it comes to mind, and I tear up all over again.

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Unfortunately my best story for this is from my own client. We had a client who was on the board of directors for a company, and was being sued for allegedly not telling the board something. His part of the case was really only a smaller part of a larger and more complicated case, so while there were a lot of other issues in the case overall, the entire case against him specifically essentially boiled down to whether or not he told the board about X.

I and few other attorneys spent an entire week — 9 AM to 5 PM or later, Monday through Friday — prepping this client for his deposition by going over every document in the case with him and explaining why it was important. On several occasions we reiterated that no matter what else happened in the case, as long as we can show that he told the board about X, he was fine.

The day of the deposition arrives. Opposing counsel sits down and starts questioning our client. In the first 5-10 minutes of the dep, opposing counsel straight-up asks our client what he told the board. Client responds, “I told them about Y, I told them about Z, I told them about A, B, and C” — and says NOTHING about X, literally the only issue in the case against him.

In 20+ years of practice it was the closest I’ve ever come to rage-quitting on a client.

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gellert gridlewald

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wow!

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My father as a young lawyer was trying to get a case to take place in one state and not another because the insurance laws were more favorable in state A. The company he was in litigation with wanted it in state B for that reason, and claimed they only distributed in state A but had no locations in it and should not have to go to court in state A.

Well this company was a soda company and my dad has a major diet soda addiction, he goes through at least a 12 pack a day. So they were in a meeting with the soda company lawyers and took a break and he went downstairs to get a diet soda. When it came out he noticed on the can that it said "Distrubted by the XYZ soda company of State A". So he got another diet soda and brought that one up stairs to the meeting. The XYZ soda co decided to settle after that.

This was in the late 70s or early 80s I believe.

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TheCapitalOfTurkeyIsAnkara

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My favorite soda is from XYZ soda co

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