8. “Stress”

I know an older successful lawyer who got a rapist off on a suspended sentence. He said the judge seemed swayed by the fact that the defendant had a high stress job managing about 200 employees, and basically gave him no punishment. The girls (there were 2) freaked out when they heard the ruling and the lawyer felt really bad. Did Not expect a suspended sentence but did too good of a job. He regrets it…

9. Common-Law

I represented the woman in this. Guy and girl live together for a decade as a couple decades ago. She cheats on him so he leaves town after being together for 5 or so years. He ends up moving to Michigan and ends up getting a good job building cars. The guy ends up retiring a few years ago and gets some kind of ERISA money from his pension. Whorebag finds out about the settlement and ends up suing and getting half of the $ because she was his common-law wife.

10. “I didn’t say a single lie…”

Divorce case. Custody battle. I represented the wife. She cheated on her poor husband during the marriage. I thought the case was lost after they played a tape of her with the other man. As a last ditch effort, I figured out she wasn’t 18 when the marriage contract was signed, so it was voidable and she got full custody. I did all this while following the lawyers’ ethical code. I didn’t say a single lie that day.

11. “Don’t bother…”

Not a win, but relevant.

I got a client, a legal aid dude where somehow the brief fall across my desk. The charge: Arson of his ex-wife’s shed

I meet with my solicitor who simply doesn’t care and is adament the client is guilty and this guy has generally got a really good gut feel about these things. We meet the client who insists that it is a frame job, that his ex-wife is trying to get back at him for some slight and is damning his good name.

The guy is adament and to my eternal shame, I believed him. I took the case to hearing and we fought it on the grounds that he wasn’t guilty.

Half way through, some evidence emerged about him being seen acquiring things to start a fire. I take him aside and ask him if he wants to vary his instructions because quite frankly, I still think we can do pretty well out of a plea of guilty.

The guy looks me square in the eye and with total and utter sincerity tells me that he is innocent, that he would never do such a thing and that he needs me to believe in him because people have let him down so often. For what its worth, I was 100% convinced of his innocence after that speech.

We finish the hearing and he is found guilty, I turn around to look at him and he has the ghost of a smirk on his face. He gets a very minor sentence, similar to what I would have gotten if we pleaded guilty at first instance which was better then I expected.

I tell him that since he is innocent, we can appeal the decision and take it before the higher courts to clear his good name.

The fucker just smiles at me and goes, “Don’t bother, I did it. It’s a fair cop.”

That’s the exact moment I stopped having any faith in my clients telling me anything other than lies.

Photo Credit: Pixabay/CC0

12. “Sad Face.”

I once had a case representing a pharmacy that was suing a nursing home.

The pharmacy had a contract for exclusivity of supply with the nursing home and the nursing home hired a new contracts manager. The new contracts manager unilaterally made the decision to sever the contract and appoint a new third party as the sole supplier.

My clients sued the nursing home for $300,000 in damages (that a lot of medicine!) plus another $30,000 in costs and interest.

The nursing home folded, we divided up the remains with the other creditors and got basically 20c in the dollar, all of the residents in the nursing home had to find alternate accommodation and about 40 staff lost their jobs. I heard anecdotally that many of the older patients who were confused and had Alzheimers etc were VERY distressed about the move, crying and shaking etc.

The kicker – contract failed because they went out of business anyway.

Sad face.