Lawyers' Wildest Plot Twists
As much as lawyers generally have control over what's going on in the courtroom, there's always the chance for a wild card. Some kind of breakthrough, unexpected confession, or bombshell new piece of evidence that changes everything. These lawyers confessed their most dramatic plot twist moments from court, and they’re guaranteed jaw-droppers.
1. Identity Crisis
This happened during an employment case. We go to the deposition of my client and get everything set up. The first question posed to my client is simple enough: "Please state your name". But instead of answering, my client immediately looks at me and asks, "Can we take a break"? We do, and she pulls me out into the hall. What she says next is jaw-dropping.
She tells me that she's been lying to me about her real identity. Apparently, she's a serial scammer and has changed identities seven times since the 90s.
She thought the other attorneys had somehow figured it out, and that's why they’d asked her the name question. Um, excuse me? What???
2. Don’t Stop Believing
My dad is out of state on business driving through some no-name town when he goes through an intersection. Suddenly, a cop pulls him over and tickets him—stating that he ran a stop sign.
My dad insisted that there was not any stop sign, but the cop did not listen. Furious, he went back to the intersection and saw that there was indeed a stop sign hidden behind a tree and twisted in the wrong direction!
Even more angry, he went into a convenience store and bought a disposable camera. The clerk laughed because he saw what happened and knew what was up. Luckily, my dad had to be back there in a few weeks for work.
The cop assumed that someone with out of state plates would just pay the ticket, and was shocked when my dad turned up in court, calmly presented his evidence to the judge, and strolled out in five minutes scot-free.
3. A Woman Scorned
I was fresh out of law school and took a job to save the world. It was my second court appearance, ever.
My client had gotten a protective order against her horrible boyfriend, which included a requirement that he not call her or come within a certain distance of her. He'd been calling her, so we took him back to court to enforce the protective order.
What she had neglected to mention to me was that he had been calling her because she had taken a baseball bat to his car while it was parked outside of his work and left a note taped to the steering wheel that said something to the effect that if she ever saw him out with "
that witch” again, it wouldn't just be his car she came after with a baseball bat.
It's been 20 years. I now do commercial law. I will be six feet under before I will ever voluntarily touch another domestic matter.
4. Time To Face The Music
I once observed a memorable case where the plaintiff’s attorney inexplicably decided that it would be a good idea to play Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” as his closing argument. Seriously.
Rather than summarizing his case's details, he opted to just awkwardly play the song in a feeble attempt to evoke an emotional response from the jury. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work.
