When lawyers work with people put on trial, they must share every last detail related to their case. Everything matters! But well, not everyone understands that. And sometimes, it can be the decisive factor between winning and losing your case!
Lawyers on Reddit lament instances where a client failed to mention something that cost them their cases and we’ve gathered some of the hilarious ones for you.
#1 Image Of Stability And Fitness
I’m a court appointed attorney for qualifying individuals in family matters.
Termination of parental rights case. Have been fighting to argue that parent is stable, working lawfully, has a suitable apartment, doesn’t need psychotropic meds anymore, ready to be a parent, etc. After a few months of negotiating with all the parties and Department of Children, Court services; we have a pre-trial to try and convince guardians.
I meet with my client before the hearing to see if anything changed. “nope, all good, let’s get my kids”. Great, that’s not happening today, but let’s try…
We get going in court. My client, who is super hot headed and quick to anger, gets riled up and goes off on the guardians. Screaming in open court. It doesn’t end there, but reveals 1. that no longer is working; 2. no longer in apartment, 3. doesn’t want to have a relationship with guardians despite her kids loving them, 4. won’t send her kids pictures of the toys they miss and can’t have; 5. plans on moving out of state 6. thinks they can live as a family off of state aide when she gets then back; AND is 4 months pregnant. All in the matter of 15 seconds, I was too shocked to even react. Speechless.
Not the image of stability and parental fitness I’ve been trying to paint since last July.
The client was working really hard to get everything right, and legitimately had everything going for her prior to this hearing. I was not making false representations or trying to get a monster reinstated. This was a true bombshell as I did my due diligence to make sure things were on the up and up and statutory requirements were met. Things feel part very fast apparently. This was a very atypical situation, parents typically do a really good job working hard to meet their requirements. —flyingthrghhconcrete
#2 See No Evil
Not my client, but the son of the opposing party (and presumably the party himself) lied about being blind to make himself seem more sympathetic as a witness. We didn’t know either until he took the witness box, their counsel asked him to take the oath, and he picked the card up and read it.
That was the cherry on top of a series of ridiculous events. The judge dismissed the whole thing in our client’s favor shortly after. I was a trainee at the time, but my boss, who was in her late sixties then, said it was the most ridiculous case she’d ever handled. —Crow_eggs
#3 Run Boy Run
I heard of a guy trying to appeal his disability benefit being revoked.
He was supposedly a paraplegic, but the opposition had over 10 minutes of video footage of him walking, running, and even jumping over a fence
After the one-minute mark, the judge said “okay I’ve seen enough. Please leave.” —jonesiguess
#4 Little Mister Sunshine
Credit card theft/fraud case. When I was a young lawyer back in the late 80’s I was trying this guy on a cc case and the witness was the department store clerk. Before video surveillance, the state relied heavily on witness identification. As she described the “customer” that was purchasing the very unique clothing her store sold I asked her how could she be so sure it was my client. She looked at my client who was wearing the most obnoxiously yellow shirt imaginable and said “because not only does he completely match the description I just gave you but he’s wearing the exact same shirt I sold him.” The jury convicted him and I learned that day to better prepare my clients for trial. —hankthetank2112
#5 Fashion Icon
My house was robbed. In addition to all the stuff the thief took, he also stole a bunch of my suits and all of my neckties, I had a big collection, like 100 or so. However, the thief left fingerprints on a hard plastic box that I kept spare change in. Fast forward 3 months, the thief is caught in the act of robbing another house in the same neighborhood, the same detectives on my case, and this new theft. They fingerprint the guy and the fingerprints match the ones from my house. At the thief’s arraignment, I see him stroll in wearing my suit and my tie. I tell the district attorney, he says there’s really no way to prove it.
However, the tie he chose to wear was a one-of-kind street map of San Francisco and I still had all the documentation to prove it. The district attorney’s eyes widen and he informs the judge. The judge has the thief placed under arrest again for possession of the stolen property. The thief’s lawyer was dumbfounded. It was a nice end to a rough situation! —West-Operation
#6 Say My Name, Say My Name
Employment case. We got to the deposition of my client and were all set up. The first question is “please state your name.” The client looks at me and says “Can we take a break?” We do and she pulls me out in the hall to tell me she’s lied to me about her identity. She’s apparently a serial fraudster and has changed identities 7 times since the 90s. She apparently thought the other attorneys had somehow figured it out and that’s why they asked the question. —Philosopher422
#7 What Are You Looking At?
My father is a Judge. I remember him talking about a case where a woman was suing for a severe back injury that she said was preventing her from working and taking care of her kids and so on. In the middle of the trial, a pen rolled off the table and she is bending over trying to reach it from her chair, but the pen was too far away, so she stands up and bends over and picks it up, and goes back to her seat as if nothing is out of the ordinary.
My dad is just looking at her and she snaps at my dad and goes what are you staring at? My dad asked her if she was okay and her response was that she was fine. Her attorney leaned over and said something to her and She then loudly started complaining about her back and how much her back hurt but no one believed her lol. —mortismalum
#8 I Won’t Go Speechless
I am actually a lawyer, but I was only watching this trial, not participating.
So the case was, that Woman A had hit Woman B in the head with a heavy beer pint at a bar, and Woman B got pretty serious injuries. The defense claimed that Woman A had not hit anyone with the pint, but instead had just thrown the pint into a random direction, and it happened to hit B in the head, thus it was an accident and not a battery. Well, the prosecution had a CCTV tape from the bar, and it was shown at the trial.
And the tape CLEARLY showed in HD as A walked behind B, and smashed the pint to her head so hard that the pint shattered on impact.
I looked at the defense lawyer and his jaw literally almost hit the table. The prosecutor also noticed this and asked something along: “Thrown, eh?” And the defense lawyer said that due to technical difficulties he couldn’t get the CCTV tape open on his computer when he was reviewing the evidence. Woman A was found guilty.
So yeah, I was completely dumbfounded. —Jugiboy
#9 Mixing Business With Pleasure
This one ended my marriage (well, it was the start of the end of the marriage)
My husband lost his job in the title/mortgage business. Applied for unemployment, got denied. I decide to help him with his appeal hearing. I asked him multiple times before the hearing “ Is there anything you did that caused them to fire you?” He says no absolutely not they fired him out of nowhere.
The hearing day comes. He testifies under oath that he did nothing wrong, was a good employee, no issues. Upon cross-examination, the other attorney pulls out documents from one of his real estate closings – documents he forged and backdated. Had to admit he perjured himself.
Needless to say, he didn’t get unemployment and he didn’t sleep at home that night. —lawgirl3278
#10 Undercover
A buddy of mine’s case as a public defender. A gal was busted on drug charges and told him she didn’t have any drugs on her when they arrested her. He thought, ok we’ll use that. Turns out, she didn’t have any drugs on her when they arrested her because she just sold them to an undercover cop. —CheapCigars
#11 Facepalming Right Now
I had a client who, despite being a large man, had been domestically abused by his much smaller wife throughout their marriage. After the divorce, she turned her anger on their son. He ran away one day to live with his dad and we filed to restrict her parenting time and for a permanent modification.
At the permanent hearing, she denied being abusive to the child or my client in front of the child, said she never threatened anyone ever, and that she never made disparaging remarks about my client in front of their son. What she didn’t know, and therefore hadn’t told her attorney, is that he had recorded multiple instances of her abuse.
So I called my client back up for rebuttal and played an audio recording of her screaming at my client, threatening to break his face in, and calling him a loser, all while the child could be heard in the background begging her to stop. I looked over at the other attorney and she had her face in her hands. We won.
#12 When In A Ditch, Stop Digging
Not me, but my mentor. This is the reason you never ask questions that you don’t already know the answer to in court.
During the trial with the judge on a divorce matter, the wife brought up that he had abused her during the course of their marriage. The client whispers to my mentor that that is absolutely NOT true.
On the stand, during his portion of testimony, my mentor asks, “At any point in the marriage, did you lay your hands on your wife?”
“One time we were having an argument and I held her down on the couch until she stopped arguing with me.”
What.
My mentor said it was like she could see it happening in slow motion and all the alarm bells were going off in her head because he had NEVER mentioned this and, apparently, to him, this was not abuse.
The judge gave the wife a lot more money as a result and the husband was baffled. My mentor was fuming.
The husband admitted this was the only time he had laid hands on his wife. My mentor was more peeved because she had thought the case was in the bag since the wife had abandoned the kids with her husband to run off with her lover down in Florida and literally only came back to the state to get the divorce done. Husband had been noted as being a great dad to the kids and a good figure in the community. Hence why she was so damn shocked at his answer. —rivlet
#13 Like A Dog With A Bone
I’m still a law student and this happened during my first internship at a court: A girl among other people was charged with drug possession but because she had thrown away the drugs and the police couldn’t prove that she bought or owned the drugs (bc it could have been one of the other people as well who still had drugs on them). The judge ruled in dubio pro reo, he then asked if she wants to say/ add something and this girl asked if she can get HER drugs back. The defense attorney looked like he was about to get a heart attack.
For those wondering, I know what in dubio pro reo means but I wasn’t sure if they use the term in other countries and tried to explain it if not. This happened in Germany. —Tytonidae7
#14 Staying True To Oneself
I was actually on a jury. The guy was suing a business, said he got injured, couldn’t work for 3 years. Defense counsel sir, isn’t it true that you spent 18 of those months in prison for armed robbery?
The guy was saying he was shopping at a major grocery store chain and slipped in some water on the ground in front of a freezer. Guy has a cell phone video his wife made of him in the water and we could hear her saying that the water wasn’t showing up on video and to splash it with his hand so it would look better in the video…
It also came out that he’d had 3 prior convictions for ‘crimes of dishonesty’ (that may not be the exact term, but something similar) for things like shoplifting and other petty crimes. The guy was representing himself pro se.
Defense counsel asked him if his inability to work could be from the 2 previous knee injuries he’d had. When asked how they knew about those injuries he was told his previous lawyer had given the defense his medical records upon request.
Guy wanted to enter his MRIs as evidence but had no one there as an expert witness to explain to the jury what they showed. He wanted to show us what the results were. —drbusty
#15 Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire
The client said his ex owed him a lot of money and that she was trying to get out of paying him back by getting a protective order against him. Seemed reasonable so I took his case. At the hearing, it came out that they were never a couple, that he was sending sex toys to her residence on a weekly basis, and that she never asked for the thousands of dollars he gave her over the years (stripper). We lost, he got laughed out of court and he learned a valuable lesson: tell your lawyer the good AND the bad stuff before trial! —crunchyfunyons
#16 Incompetent
Not a lawyer, but going to law school. I worked for a defense attorney who did a lot of federal work. One of our cases was with this guy charged with the sex trafficking of minors. We met him at the prison to interview him and he swore up and down he had nothing to do with this and that he didn’t even know the girls.
A month or so later, heaps of evidence from the US attorneys office comes in and it’s pages of Snapchat messages and texts between him and these girls, video confessions from every co-defendant and victim saying our guy was the ring-leader, proof of him checking in/out of different motel rooms, etc. We showed him the evidence and he claimed his co-defendants were conspiring against him.
He continued to deny everything and wanted to go to trial but we repeatedly told him that would not be wise because of all the evidence against him. He ended up requesting a new attorney to be appointed claiming that we were “ineffective.” To this day my old boss and I reminisce about how difficult this client was when we catch up on the phone. —MajoryKeyInAMinor
#17 Money, Money, Money
Not a lawyer but a woman I know received several hefty speeding fines. In my country, you can go see a magistrate to have the fines reduced if you plead poverty. She heard about this and decided to give it a shot, so she went to court and told the magistrate a sob story about not having enough money.
The magistrate heard her out, then he asked her: “Madam, what type of car do you drive?”
She replied in a tiny voice, “A Porsche.” —Isawablackcat
#18 Snitches Get Stitches
Not me, but my dad represented a guy in a civil case. He doesn’t normally do criminal law, but in this instance, the question of a forged signature came up, and his client lied, saying he didn’t forge it. My dad was very clear in explaining that admitting to him wouldn’t land him in jail, it would just allow him to build a better defense, but he still denied forgery, and so my dad rolled with it. He said his case was completely cut up once it came out that yes, in fact, his client did forge the signature.
Guys and gals, your lawyers aren’t a snitch, they’re trying to get you the best possible result. Always be honest with your lawyer. —ssauronn
#19 Not All Men, But This One
Not a lawyer. My parents had a long messy divorce that took 2.5 years in court. My dad claimed that my mother was trying to take 100% of everything based on a settlement offer she sent him. He failed to mention to his lawyers that her initial offer (also sent to his previous lawyers) was a 60/40 split and she only sent that 100% one in response to an equally unreasonable offer from him.
As soon as she could prove the initial offer was reasonable the judge just basically ruled on everything according to that first offer. His lawyers were SO angry because they built their entire case around the idea that she was the unreasonable one.
(I think it was something to do with arguing that she was not sending genuine settlement offers, I’m not sure why. His goal wasn’t to win, it was to prolong the battle. But the original offer exposed him in the lie in front of the judge which made the rest of the process go very quickly). —Winterplatypus
#20 Free For Hire
I was approached by this attorney to work for him for free to go after smugglers. This guy had been arrested for dumping goods onto American markets that violated trade agreements. In his arrest, a bunch of goods were left in warehouses to rot, and their owners, his clients, were never paid.
This attorney showed me that this smuggler had assets and that he had gone to the criminal trial and gotten the judge to set aside $2 million of the criminal penalties to settle his client’s debts. He had receipts, invoices, all of the paperwork. He just needed associates to help him take the case to trial. He wanted me to work for free, but he would pay me on contingency once he obtained the verdict.
He had two other attorneys working for him with the same deal. I worked on the case for a short while but luckily moved on to other things. The other two attorneys worked on that case for over two years. At one point, they negotiated a $1.5 million settlement of all claims. The attorney in charge rejected the offer because he was convinced he could get twice as much at trial.
In the end, the case settled for $200k, because none of the clients would enter the United States to testify, for fear of being arrested. The two associates got $8k apiece for two years of work. —Thompson_S_Sweetback
#21 I Can’t Even Move My Arm
Not me but my legal studies teacher who used to be a lawyer was representing a woman suing a supermarket for a slip that caused her to hurt her shoulder. She had to tell the court how much it had impacted life and the fact that she couldn’t do her everyday tasks.
She said, “I can’t even lift my arms like this to hang the washing,” and proceeded to show the court the exact gesture in a perfect form that she was explaining she ‘couldn’t do.’ —shaz_k
#22 It Wasn’t Me!
Little late to the party but here goes, and obligatory not my client:
The company I worked for at the time was doing due diligence before acquiring a small tech startup. The COO of the tech startup was a well-liked guy in the company, friendly and outgoing. Though we had heard rumblings that the COO was rather hands-on with the work and with female employees.
Apparently, there was a walk-away package proposed to the COO that would let him keep a sizable portion of his post-acquisition bonus because a young woman who worked in their sales department had filed HR complaints against the COO and obtained counsel. I sat in on the meeting with the COO and the company’s retained lawyers while they grilled him about his contacts with the young woman.
The COO denied ever having contact with her within the company without multiple other people present (those people said his behavior toward her in the meetings didn’t raise any flags). The COO emphatically denied having any contact with her outside of work. The lawyers asked the question a half-dozen different ways and each time the COO denied any out-of-work contact.
Later we meet with the woman and her lawyer with the COO, not present. Her lawyer gives us a rather graphic card that came with a bouquet of flowers addressed to her from the COO. The guy had an account with a florist linked to his credit card. When the company-retained lawyers confronted him he said, “But I never had contact with her. It’s not like I delivered the flowers myself.”
COO got terminated for cause, so no walk-away package. At her request, the woman was given PTO until after the acquisition then moved to another one of the companies under our umbrella. —GuiltyLawyer
#23 Snow Down, Bullet
Minor traffic cases can be the worst for this, believe it or not, because they are short and simple, and oftentimes the client isn’t there, so if you get blindsided by something critical there’s often no chance to consult with them to turn things around.
I had a simple speeding case, 70mph in a 55. No big deal, if she does a driving improvement course the court will usually dismiss or reduce those since her driving record wasn’t bad.
When I showed up for her, I found out that she had been driving 70 up an unplowed snow lane, to get around all the other cars traveling in the lane that had been plowed because they were driving too slow. I didn’t know it was even possible to drive 70 on fresh snow. The officer stated he’d already cut her a break by not writing the ticket for reckless driving, and the judge politely agreed he didn’t feel comfortable reducing it under those circumstances. When I called her up after court to confirm, she did, claimed she’d just forgotten to mention it.
Now maybe I’ve lived too much of my life in the South, but that just boggles my mind as a detail you’d forget when hiring a lawyer for that incident. I would have told her in advance that hiring us was a waste of money, not to mention the hassle of taking an 8-hour class, and she should probably just go ahead and pay for this one. I legitimately do that all the time during consults; give my honest assessment if the case is even worth doing, and so by omitting that detail she harmed herself for no reason. At least she took it well and didn’t get defensive. —AmberWavesofFlame
#24 Thank You, Judge
Not a lawyer (law student) and not exactly what you asked for, but I feel like it fits here anyways
We read about a criminal case in which there wasn’t enough evidence to convict the suspect, so the suspect was not guilty due to reasonable doubt, and he responded “thank you judge, I’ll never do it again”. DA went into appeal and the dude got convicted —Belgian_friet
#25 Speedy Gonzalez
Had a client charged with reckless driving for going 200 miles an hour with his pregnant girlfriend in the car. The dude showed up to court with a shirt that had a huge logo of acme racing on it. (It was years ago and I can’t remember the actual name of the racing team).
Another client showed up in court very nicely dressed and had even ironed his jeans, but the jeans had giant marijuana leaves all down the front. At least he wasn’t there for a drug case. —chaitcat
#26 Pinchy Fingers
Not a lawyer, but my mum (also not a lawyer) told me about a story where she sued a woman my mum babysat for.
The woman had a boy, around 6 years, and she needed a babysitter while she was working. My mum took the opportunity to make some extra money but after around 4 months the woman stopped paying. So after half a year, my mum sued and in the courtroom, the woman apparently said something along the lines of “I didn’t pay her because my son was sleeping all the time. I know it”
So not only did she not pay my mum but it came out that she had some guy stalking my mum not only while babysitting but also after and before that so the woman would know what my mum was doing. —Nekry_Koneko
#27 He Was Right There, Your Honor!
I practiced family law and represented dad going into custody. He had told me that mom has cheated on him with a plethora of men, giving me a list of fifteen or twenty names. (Names changed obviously.)
On the day of trial during cross-examination of her, I get to the list.
Me: You cheated on him with John Smith, yes?
Her: No.
Me: You cheated on him with Mike Davis?
Her: No.
Me: You cheated on him with …
Her: I slept with all of those men… but he was right there with me.
And I saw the case dissipate immediately. —dblh3l1x
#28 Kick It Out Of Them
I’m just a paralegal in personal injury law, but I love telling people about this client. It blows my mind that a person can have so little shame about lying for money.
We got a client who said that they were boarding a train and that the edge of the platform was slippery, so they slipped and their foot got wedged between the train and the platform. They said it started moving despite their yelling for it to stop, which caused a compound fracture of their fibula and a closed fracture of their ankle. And they were pregnant.
They had surgery immediately to repair their leg and spent a few days in the hospital, racking up a $100,000 bill. A month later, we received video footage of the incident from the train station…
Our client missed the closing doors to the train by a solid 30 seconds, got upset, and full-on charge-kicked the side of the moving train, the force of which absolutely shattered their lower leg.
I wish them the best and a full recovery, but Jesus Christ, dude. —xechasate
#29 Stop Pointing Fingers
When I was an intern at court I was watching a battery trial with another intern. The defendant was asked if he can remember how many people were present when he beat up the other guy. He then points at my fellow intern and says rather loudly: “She was there but she didn’t see anything! Don’t trust her!”.
Of course, she wasn’t there and the defendant was found guilty. —order65
#30 Call The Police
Not mine but saw it in r/entitledparents. The case was about a woman who took the car from her daughter and grounded her. The daughter called the police and the court proceedings began. Apparently, the woman didn’t tell her lawyer that the daughter was 22 years old and didn’t live with her mom. The mom decided to go to the daughter’s place and took her car out without. —emulatorguy076