The justice system is often a mystery to those who’ve never had to be involved with it, and even some who have. So many wild stories of different varieties come out of there every single day. A normal day to someone working for the courts can be absolutely astounding to those on the outside.
Someone on Reddit asked for some examples of those crazy stories, and here are just a few.
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Mic drop.
“I used to work as a legal secretary for a personal injury lawyer. He told me about a case where his client had radiation burns from an x-ray machine. In the avalanche of documents he received from the defendant during discovery, he found an internal memo.
“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, he 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.”
Nature’s bounty.
“One neighbor (defendant) throws dog [expletive] over the fence & the other neighbor puts a stalking injunction out for it. In court it showed that the ‘dog [expletive]’ was actually pine cones and the case was dismissed. It was shocking because who does that?!”
Excuses, excuses.
“Probably a veteran’s benefits case where the government got out of paying benefits by arguing that the vet’s hearing loss was caused by gunfire from occasional recreational hunting rather than several years of working daily in close proximity to jet engines during his service.
“Enraging and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.”
Not in control.
“Car crash. The defendant thought he was not at fault because he was having seizures/passing out due to 1) the screens in vehicles or 2) carbon monoxide. In the end on cross [examination] he admitted that the ‘car’ crossed the dotted lines, but he [didn’t] do it. It was the ‘car’.”
Hey, what?
“I was clerking at the time. Little kid fight club. Bunch of mom’s put their kids in a circle and made them fight each other gladiator style. Real dark stuff.
“Video included two 10yo girls beating the crap out of each other. Bets were taken but not on all fights. Some were just for entertainment. No fathers involved.”
For the sake of convenience.
“I’m not a lawyer but I served jury duty on a case where a man placed his gun on the cashier table at the port [authority] while trying to pay for his ticket because his hands were full and the gun was in the way of the wallet in his pocket.”
A compromise.
“A mother sold the family farm out from under the son who was supposed to inherit it. Someone shot her (non-fatally). 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, but each so adamantly pointed at the other as the shooter that 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.”
A tricky vacation.
“I think the illegal smuggling of a horse [across borders] is top for me. It’s surprising how much paper work is involved in giving an animal fake papers and how hard it is to trace the perpetrators down.”
Employment opportunities.
“Slayer statute, interpleader case in federal court. Client murdered her husband to collect insurance proceeds. Found out that she promised to pay 2 dudes to bind his hands and feet with duct tape, execute him, and burn him in an alley, for $20k each, to be payed out of the insurance funds.
“She lost.”
Coincidence?
“Did an alleged Arson case for an insurance company once. The insured had to provide a list of all items he had lost including over 1000 book titles.
“Every book was the biography of a serial killer, we figured it was probably every book ever written about a serial killer. Insured gave off serious dark and mysterious vibes. Who knows the truth.”
Physical evidence.
“Mom is an attorney and has seen some crazy [expletive] but her craziest stories come from when we lived in Tahoe. She worked at one of the only major law firms in the county so they worked on a variety of cases.
“I’ve heard her talk about a lot of cases dealing with naked people and one time a guy came in with his severed arm as ‘proof’ he lost his arm in a work accident.”
Paper trails.
“Client paid a multi-million dollar settlement with a hand-written personal check. He was pissed and refused to do a wire transfer like a normal person. I think the other side had to scramble to find a bank to deposit the check.
“Banking regulations limit how much money a bank can hold on deposit. You just can’t take a check that large to any local bank. The check eventually cleared, so I guess they figured it out. Good times…. That case will be on my resume for sure.”
Try again later.
“My sister is a criminal defense lawyer. She told me about a case where this guy had committed murder and after a week couldn’t take the guilt and handed himself in.
“Only when he got to the police station and confessed, they asked him where he killed this woman. He told them and they said it was out of their jurisdiction and to go to another police station to confess because it was closer to where the crime happened.”
Making moves.
“A labor case in which, in the middle of the hearing the judge (60 years old male) start to flirt with my client (23 years old female) in a direct, straightforward way.
“It was SO shocking that was one of the only cases I got speechless in a trial. Those hearings are closed here in Brazil so no jury, no recording, nothing.”
Zero tollerance.
“I’m an interpreter not an attorney, but I had a school case to interpret regarding bullying. […] Apparently the seniors would trap the freshmen in a designated bathroom after lunch and jump them.
“Four seniors and eight freshman who were beat up individually, there were supposed to be nine but one was in the hospital. They showed surveillance of how the seniors picked the freshmen to beat up and there were 2 teachers aware of this, in one of the videos one of the teachers helped the seniors by pointing out who the freshmen were. […] the teachers never got in trouble.
“Only one bully was expelled and all the freshmen were suspended.”
