Legal Humour Moments

This guy had his truck repossessed by a large corporate bank. A corporate bank with over a trillion dollars in assets.Normally, the story would end there, but in this instance, the problem was that this guy was homeless and all of his worldly possessions were in the back of his truck. Before the truck was auctioned off, the repo company took all of his possessions and threw them into a open storage bin located outside their building. This guy went to a law firm looking to sue the Repo company for property damages of his possessions, which he valued at...

As any experienced trial attorney knows, in the small suburban and rural courts that dominate a state's legal system, it's not “what you know” but “who you know” that really matters. The local district courts of the liberal, free-thinking state of Massachusetts are no different. As an old school trial attorney once told me, if you leave the Boston area with a copy of the Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure, you automatically become one of the smartest and prepared trial attorneys in the territory. A woman contacted a colleague of mine about defending a small legal fee claim of...

An attorney friend recently became involved in a case in which a criminal defendant had, with the assistance of his defense counsel, worked out a plea agreement with the prosecution in which he would plead guilty to an indictment in exchange for the prosecution and the court's sentencing him to five years of imprisonment. The problem with this plea agreement was that the indicted charge by statute had a maximum penalty of two years. This problem was not discovered by a jail house lawyer until the defendant was four and a half years into his sentence, at which point the...

The city I live in has come up with a unique way to generate revenue. My city, like most metropolitan cities, has strict residential parking laws. If your car does not have a residential parking sticker during weekday hours, your car will be ticketed. And the Ticket Police love roaming the neighborhood to hand out these tickets (to raise revenue, I suspect). Sounds reasonable so far. The issue arises when your residential parking sticker comes up for renewal. You see, you need to bring in your old residential parking sticker in order to receive your new residential parking sticker. Now,...

Here's a humorous (real) announcement: UW Law School Alumni Association presents: The Story of the Tri Hoang Case, A Victim Who Taught Two Attorneys that Fighting Honorably and Using Good Techniques Can Lead to Great Results."Fighting Honorably"? "Using Good Technique"? Where is the reference to catching flies with chopsticks and being flexible like the willow? Maybe this will go straight to a made-for-TV movie, with Jackie Chan and Jet Li playing the high-kicking attorneys who have learned to Fight Honorably and kick insurance company butt. At least the Victim Taught them how to get Great Results. Too bad someone didn't...

Some idle drafting to deal with an ageless problem. DATE DISCLAIMER While you have agreed to meet me socially on the time and in the place stipulated in Schedule 1 annexed hereto (the date), for the purposes of avoiding future misunderstandings,  conflict and unmet expectations, it must be clearly understood and accepted by you that while I will exercise all reasonable efforts to ensure the date is of a divertingly enjoyable nature (to which end I will apply a reasonable effort and chat in a workmanlike,  considerate and urbane manner,  and appear to apparently show interest in your personal life...

The city of Boston has come up with a novel way to solve its downtown parking problem: The police have begun ticketing motorcycles for not parking parallel to the curb in the same way that cars do. They began this practice after receiving complaints from drivers who were knocking down the diagonally parked motorcycles while parking their own cars. Apparently, instead of ticketing the car driver for not parking properly, they are ticketing the motorcycle for saving space (and helping the environment). The city is hoping that by forcing motorcycles to take up a whole parking space (instead of the...