Remember the case of the woman who sued McDonald's for their coffee being too hot? Despite the fact that said case turned out to be less frivolous than initially reported, remember how ridiculous that sounded when you first of heard about it? You ain't seen nothing yet.
Lawyers of Reddit took the time to share the most objectionable cases that people brought to them. The fact that some of these were actually were taken to court is practically indefensible. These clients are out of order. Commence!
Stretching The Truth Only So Far
“I worked on a custody dispute between a mother and grandmother in which both sides were absolutely outraged by the others’ claims.
The mother was very upset that she was alleged to have been an exotic dancer – ‘I was a lady of the night, but I was NEVER an exotic dancer!’
The grandmother, in return, was furious that she was alleged to have 21 cats in her 2-bedroom apartment – ‘We only have 17 cats! How DARE she flat-out lie and say that we have 21 cats.’
The child ended up living with the father in a different state.”
His Client Wanted To Tell Obama, “NO YOU CAN’T!”
“The day after President Obama won the election in 2008, I had a potential client cold-call for a claim of copyright infringement. He wanted to sue then-President-Elect Obama for having seven US flags on the podium during his acceptance speech.
The potential client claimed he had copyrighted the use of seven flags on a stage for presentations. I asked him for a registration number so I could verify details and he hung up on me.
Likely the potential client was high, wasted, or a scammer. My guess is he wanted to file a lawsuit then sit down in a boardroom during pre-trial motions and try to settle for a nominal sum. He would get a few thousand (minus lawyer fees) and go away. Unfortunately, the potential client didn’t understand that 1) you need a copyright registration BEFORE you file a lawsuit, 2) you would never get a registration for having seven flags in a backdrop of a stage, 3) that he was going to get NOTHING from then-President-Elect Obama because he would have had a firecracker team of lawyers at his avail, and 4) homie don’t play that.
It would have been unethical for me to file that lawsuit as I didn’t think it had a chance of succeeding. In other words, I thought it was frivolous and didn’t want to test local Rule 11 jurisprudence (i.e., receive sanctions) or lose my license. When I asked for his registration number, that was a clue I knew what I was doing and he bailed.”
This Client Was Missing A Few “Sparks”
“I had a bar referral call my office one day, and it was a nice woman who was almost in tears. Once I calmed her down and was able to ask her how I could help, she explained to me that someone had emptied her bank account and forced her to sign a contract saying that she would marry a stranger. I was beyond confused, but being a young attorney and wanting to help, I decided to get more detail from her. I asked for more information and what followed was one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever heard.
So this woman claimed to be Nicholas Sparks’ girlfriend. You know, the guy who wrote The Notebook and Dear John? Well, she was going on and on about how they were in love and how she was going to go to a convention being held in his honor with him. Supposedly, she wasn’t able to be his date, however, because he had to be single and appear desirable to other women. In order to ‘preserve the illusion’ that he was single, she reached out to a matchmaking company to get a date for the convention. She signed some paperwork with them and said she gave them her credit card. When she got home, she ‘read the paperwork’ and realized that she had signed up to ‘marry a stranger for $10,000,’ and that Nicholas was going to be so mad at her.
I began to realize during the course of the conversation that something was likely wrong with this woman’s mental health (and I mean that in the most respectful way I can say it). She couldn’t stay on a single train of thought, she kept making numerous outrageous claims about herself and her life, and the thoughts she did complete were riddled with inconsistencies. Here are a few choice selections:
Nicholas Sparks wrote Dear John about her and her husband, and that was how they met. She claimed he died in the war (which isn’t how the story even goes). Later, she said she wasn’t and never had been married.
She claimed that her father had programmed the first computer in Ohio in the ‘60s and that she had written the language for him. He took all the credit because he was an adult and nobody would take her seriously at her age.
She also claimed that the internet used to be able to teach you anything ‘back in the day,’ including martial arts, psychology, and the future. It didn’t work anymore due to 9/11, because the terrorists sabotaged all the programs.
After about 10 minutes of trying to figure out if this poor woman had been defrauded by a company, a man took the phone from her, put it on speaker phone, and introduced himself as her best friend and caretaker. She said that he is who he says he is, and told me that he’s an FBI agent. He asked if we could speak alone, I said yes, and he takes the phone from her. He explained to me that the woman I had been speaking to is a diagnosed schizophrenic, that he actually is her caretaker, and that he isn’t an FBI agent. He told me he was so sorry she had been wasting my time and explained what was going on.
Apparently, this poor woman had been suffering from the delusion that she is Nicholas Sparks’s fiancé after seeing the movie Dear John. She had apparently believed that delusion for a number of years. Recently, she decided that she needed to go to the Nicholas Sparks convention and had to have a date, so she contacted a matchmaking company. The company had not signed her off to marry anyone (which is impossible) and had, instead, set her up with 10 different men that could take her on dates. She did spend $2,000 (not $10,000 like she claimed to me on the phone) which was a waste of her savings, but there wasn’t any fraud. It was just a poor, mentally incapacitated woman who was hopelessly confused and upset.
I can honestly say that it was the weirdest call I’ve ever gotten. It was a mix of confusing, hilarious, and sad.”
He Lost The Magic
“As a public defender, I defended a grown man accused of stealing Magic cards from Walmart. There was an hour-long security video meticulously showing, from dozens of angles, that he was picking up sets of cards, unwrapping them, and discarding the wrappers around the store.
He insisted that he was innocent and we actually went to a jury trial instead of securing a plea deal. It took the jury eight minutes to convict him and the judge laid into my client telling him that he was the worst thief he had ever seen.
The best part: at one point in the trial, I had to spend 45 minutes explaining to the judge what Magic cards are. He couldn’t understand why anyone would need more than one deck.”
“Christmas Was Ruined”
“During law school, I was a member of a legal clinic. We represented low income individuals under the supervision of a licensed attorney/professor. We handled family law issues, but would try to point clients in the right direction if we could not personally help them. One man came in and stated that he wanted to sue Best Buy, which is not uncommon, but why he wanted to sue Best Buy was different.
This man said he purchased a refurbished computer from Best Buy for his daughter, as a Christmas present. Best Buy had neglected to remove the previous owner’s password screen and, thus, this man and his daughter were unable to access the computer until they took it back to Best Buy, which was, understandably, closed on Christmas Day.
This, he said, caused his 12-year-old daughter to begin to the question the very existence of Santa Claus. He and his daughter then argued the rest of the day, until, finally, he admitted to her that there was (Spoiler Alert) no Santa Claus. His words were, ‘Seeing your daughter lose faith in Santa ruined all Christmases to come.’ He also claimed that, now, his daughter was ‘a real jerk’ since she had stopped believing in Santa Claus.
What was more interesting was the amount of damages he requested. He stated he believed that Best Buy owed him ‘at least $25 million’ because Christmas was ruined, his daughter would never believe in Santa again, and, now, he had to deal with her being ‘a real jerk.’
I did not believe he had any type of recourse against Best Buy for inadvertently demolishing his daughter’s belief in Santa, but even if I did, our clinic could not help him. I informed him that we only handled family law issues and he should call the local Bar Association’s lawyer referral service. He stated the Bar Association already told him they would not take his case.
Then he proceeded to ask if I had children. I told him I did not. Then, he proceeded to wish that all my future kids have their belief in Santa Claus ruined. He stated he would not help me if that happened. He then told me to ‘get stuffed’ and left. The whole time, I was wondering how this guy’s daughter believed in Santa Claus until age 12.”
Strange Case, Ay?
“A year out of law school, I once had a potential client who wanted me to sue Canada. Apparently, he could not get into the country due to his felony record. I tried to reason with him that it was up to the sovereign nation to set its own rules regarding entry to the country, but he insisted that we could make a lot of money suing Canada. I didn’t take the case, but I told him I might be able to get him a letter that said ‘Sorry’ from Canada.”
Speed Fresh!
“I once worked as a prosecutor on the misdemeanor docket and heard some really amazing defenses that, if the defendant had an attorney, would not have made. My favorite was this guy charged with speeding who gave what I call the ‘five dollar foot long defense.’ He pled guilty but wanted to provide an explanation to the judge that he had just eaten a five dollar roast beef foot long from Subway and was speeding to get home before he fell asleep because roast beef is sedating.
The judge chuckled and asked if he meant to say turkey, a lunch meat that might cause some form of mild sedation. The man realized his mistake and said that the five dollar foot long contained both.
I tried not to burst out laughing as he used the words ‘five dollar foot long’ about a half a dozen times by this point like he was actively advertising for Subway. The judge said he didn’t think there was such a five dollar foot long available at Subway. At that point, the entire courtroom was laughing. The judge told him to choose his food more carefully and slow down, along with giving him the maximum fine.”
Legal Separation Of Haunted And Spirit
“It’s always nice to get a client from a business card you left at a diner. It means people pick those things up. However, when leaving business cards at diners in certain areas of town, I should expect some issues.
This call came through on a dreary December day as I was sipping coffee and watching the snow fall. The caller ID read that it was the local hospital, and as I picked up, I spoke to a rather frantic young man who informed me he was being held against his will and he needed an attorney to help him. When I asked where he was, he simply said, ‘The fifth floor.’ While this may sound innocuous, every hospital has a ‘fifth floor,’ where Napoleon roams the halls freely and the residents speak to their imaginary friends who may, or may not, have been an influencing factor in why they decided that clothing was a way for the government to track them and therefore the only solution was to create Poop Pants to throw off the monitoring ability of the CIA.
Long story short on this portion, within an hour of the call a friend had dropped off my fee, and I was en route to the Fifth Floor to meet with my new client. I assumed it would be an involuntary committal defense and, after speaking with my client, I gauged that, while the man was most definitely in need of mental care, he was not a danger to himself or others and was unlikely to be one. He had, in my opinion, been forced to agree to being committed by his probation officer and, frankly, I wasn’t going to let that stand. I got the name of some contacts from his treatment plan who were willing to vouch that he had, until recently, been compliant with his medications, and contacted his social worker who was able to confirm that, yes, since he had ceased taking the medication due to an inability to afford the medications, the county would assist him with it.
A slam dunk. I would simply swing my big lawyer member around the mental ward, get him released, and, then, appear in the court to defend against the involuntary committal.
Within 24 hours of being committed, my client was back at home. A hearing was set a couple weeks in the future, and I did daily checks to be certain he was compliant with his medication leading up to the hearing… until the one day I didn’t.
A call from the local police was my tip off. An older officer, one I was familiar with, called to advise they had responded to a disturbance at my client’s home. He apparently had been screaming in an empty room loud enough that the neighbors were concerned and called the police. The police officer, a friendly sort, gauged the situation and decided my client wasn’t a threat, but asked what the situation was.
‘The ghost,’ my client had responded. ‘The ghost won’t get out and it won’t leave me alone.’
‘Well,’ said the officer, ‘I can tell it to leave.’
So, he did. He told the ghost to leave. And, then, apparently for giggles, he told him that it was a ‘civil matter’ if the ghost refused to leave and, therefore, an attorney would need to be contacted, at which point my client dropped my name…. which resulted in the cop giving me a heads up.
So, I called my client, who is inconsolable at the concept of sharing his home with the ghost. Keep in mind, I had been to this guy’s house. This was the first I had heard of a ghost. But there was a competency hearing on the horizon, and this would not play well in front of the judge.
‘The cop said it’s a civil matter,’ my client repeated about the 18th time after I told him I was not, in fact, a priest, but was a lawyer and didn’t know how to perform an exorcism.
‘What do you want me to do?’ I snapped a bit. ‘Evict it?’
There are moments in time when you should keep your mouth shut. This was one of them, because the immediate response was, ‘CAN YOU? THAT’D BE GREAT!’
Well, crap.
Long story short, I ended up driving out there with a ‘Mock Up’ Notice to Quit addressed to ‘Any spirits in possession of the property located at [1313 Mockingbird Lane] without any authority under color of law,’ advising them that their possession was ‘unlawful in nature’ and ordering them to ‘quit and surrender the premises, or any portion thereof, within fifteen (15) days of the date of this notice.’
As I was obviously unable to obtain personal service via hand delivery, I had my client direct me to the portion of the premises the Ghost occupied, an empty spare bedroom, and made service by posting the notice to the door of the room. I then announced that the ghost ‘HAD BEEN SERVED A VALID NOTICE TO QUIT AND SURRENDER POSSESSION’ and went home.
A week later, as we were preparing to enter the court for my client’s competency hearing, I asked about the status.
‘Oh, it worked great!’ my client announced. ‘He moved out the same night and took all his stuff with him.’
The ghost apparently had ‘stuff.’ Anyhow, I smiled and patted my client on the shoulder as I offered some sage advice.
‘Well, good,’ I said. ‘Now, let’s not mention this in front of the judge. He might have a problem with the service and order us to let the Ghost back in if he finds out about it.’
My client nodded enthusiastically. I kept him out of the mental hospital that day. I take some comfort knowing somewhere today this crazy man is still telling people about his great lawyer who got rid of his ethereal roommate for free.
Any lawyer worth their salt looks into the merits of a case. Sometimes that means getting names and calling people to figure out what those merits are.”
His Client Was Not Dressed For Trial Success
“I used to work at a firm that did workers comp bad faith, and also did maritime personal injury plaintiff’s work. The best stories came from the maritime guys. I’m not a lawyer and this was before my time, but it was one of those stories that just got told about crazy clients.
The client was a captain, an American, for a boat offshore from Africa. Most of the crew was African. One of the crew stabbed the captain, which lead to our involvement. It was a legit injury, but the drilling company wouldn’t settle, so it went to trial. The guy was from some small rural town in East Texas and that is where the trial was set.
During one of his depositions, our client showed up in a T-shirt that had a silhouette of a woman dangling from a pole. At the bottom, there was text that said, ‘I support single mothers.’
Perfect, just what we need for a video deposition.
Later, if I’m not confusing two clients, we went to trial, and right as it was about to start, the client said, ‘I was hoping we didn’t get this judge.’
Our lawyer thought that was strange and asked him why he hoped that. Apparently, our client killed the judge’s nephew or something during a breaking and entering via the stand your ground/castle doctrine a few years prior. It was a huge case in this little small town and it was something the client neglected to mention at any point prior.
Perfect. Great thing to know as trial is beginning.
We won the case. Jury ended up awarding a huge amount and was later upheld by the court of appeals. Still not sure how.”
Animals Crackers In My “Suit”
“A woman called saying that she had a product liability suit involving animal crackers she gave to her daughter. I was thinking it was going to be something to do with food poisoning and kept listening. She explained that when she looked at the crackers, it looked like the monkey was holding its member. It was a banana.
This woman was mortified and ashamed. She said she told all her coworkers and they were very shocked and uncomfortable. I wanted to tell her she was nuts and that they were probably freaked out because she was talking about animal cracker wieners.”
Legal Help Was Not The Kind Of Help This Man Needed
“During my practice in the environmental torts division of a large law firm, I was contacted by a man who claimed fracking (using explosives and accelerants underground for natural gas extraction) had damaged his property. At least, that was the initial claim.
I started investigating what should have been an open-and-closed case – getting property assessments, pulling bank records, taking photos, and finding all the relevant leases and deeds. I asked the property owner whether he had any relevant documents, and he said, ‘Sure, I’ll bring them by tomorrow afternoon.’ Great.
Well, he brought 17 file boxes containing his own ‘investigations,’ which included everything from repeated 911 calls claiming the earth was ‘crying’ to multiple invoices from psychics and dowsers. He had piles and piles of receipts for his ‘medical expenses,’ which included chiropractors, chelation therapists and – yep – more psychics. He also printed off a copy of every SINGLE related email he ever sent, and BOY HOWDY, had he sent a bunch. He emailed everyone from the county fire department, to the attorney general, to even the CIA. I was amazed that he got responses because the emails were basically long bullet-pointed lists of lunatic ravings and attached pictures of things like his aura and his dog.
The more investigation work I did, the more it became painfully obvious that this man was just the town weirdo. The sad part was, he actually had a legitimate claim for property damage. My managing partner said to proceed with the tort claim and file a complaint. I knew the guy could never survive deposition. There was intense motion practice on the claim that took more than a year, and in the meantime, I left that firm to go in house. Right before I left, there was a series of horrendous depositions that ended with the client trying to fight the reporter and smashing the video recording devices.
I’m so glad I didn’t have to litigate the case but, occasionally, when I’m really bored, I check the court e-File system to see how things are going. ‘Down in flames’ is generally how they are going.”
She Had A Bigger Case On Her Hands Than She Realized
“I got a call from a client I had represented in the past, wanting me to help out her son. He and his girlfriend wanted to get married, but she was under 18, so she needed permission from her parents, and they wouldn’t give permission. We chatted about it for a while and then she told me it was an urgent matter, because the girl was pregnant.
‘Wait,’ I said, ‘how old did you say she was?’
‘Fourteen,’ the mom said.
‘And how old is your son?’
‘Twenty.’
‘You need to immediately hire a criminal defense lawyer to help you with this.’
Then I had to explain to her why her son had a bigger problem than not being able to get married.”
Day Laborer Was Not Happy With What His Lawyer Had To Tell Him
“I had a fellow call my office and tell me he wanted our firm to handle negotiations with some of the big companies in the vinyl siding industry. I figured he had some new product that he wanted to sell or license, but no. When he came in, he disclosed that he had discovered a defect in the vinyl siding and actually wanted us to demand a large sum of money from these companies or else he was going to disclose this defect to the news.
It turned out that he was a day laborer who had just recently been assigned to a construction project and ‘discovered’ that you can cut vinyl house siding with a sharp knife (which is the way it is actually cut onsite to be installed). The siding is supposed to be installed over a plywood backing, but his boss had told him to skip putting up the backing panels to save money. He felt that homeowners were in danger because, without the wood backing, criminals could use this knowledge to enter people’s houses, and he felt it was his solemn duty to report this to the public. That is, unless the vinyl siding companies were to cough up a bunch of cash.
Basically, his employer was scamming customers and he felt that justified his extortion of the manufacturers and wanted us to legitimize his efforts to extort money from this industry. It was a little uncomfortable to point out that, in fact, he and his boss were the criminals, and that he really didn’t have a case. It is especially uncomfortable when you are a scrawny 26-year-old lawyer and there is a heavily muscled day laborer in your office getting angrier and angrier.”
You Have The Right To Give Me Pizza!
“When I was in law school, I clerked with a solo practitioner. Our client wanted to go to trial over a charge of impersonating a police officer. What happened that led up this? One night, our client got wasted and ordered a pizza for delivery. Now, I’ve been there before. It can be frustrating to wait forever for that glorious, delicious pizza, especially in an inebriated state of mind.
Well, this guy’s genius idea to speed things up for himself was to call the pizza place back and tell them he was a police officer and if they didn’t hurry it up, there would be trouble. However, as it turned out, the guy who answered the phone at the pizza joint was a volunteer firefighter and asked for our client’s name because he knew all the police officers in that town. When our client gave him his real name (derp), and inevitably turned out that he was not, in fact, a police officer, a small investigation led to him being charged.
Before trial, our client wanted us to argue that he had a First Amendment right to tell people he was a cop. He doesn’t. He ended up pleading out, but that case stood out in my mind. I represent corporate clients in intellectual property matters now, and the stories are less exciting.”