Real Life Plot Twists that Happened in the Courtroom

Legal dramas on TV make court cases look so intense, with surprise witnesses and shocking last minute turnarounds. While the reality is that most court battles are less exciting, every now and then, something weird happens.

Here are some real life courtroom plot twists that show how any legal battle can become unpredictable in an instant.

The Poop Flood

Had a case where a man refused to pay rent because his apartment smelled terrible and was making him sick. His landlord tried to evict him. A few days after taking the case and before his first hearing the ceiling in his bathroom collapsed.

Turns out some plumbing wasn’t connected and his ceiling/walls had been filling with poop for weeks/months. The landlord settled pretty quickly after that.

Story credit: Reddit / hoktopolis

The Cover Up

I remember a guy called me and wanted to take action against the Post Office. He had received a letter from them saying, that they would no longer deliver packages to him as he was never appropiately dressed when he opened the door to accept them.

I remember being nervous about asking him to elaborate. Story credit: Reddit / NuukFartjar

Settlement Rebound

My family member sued me for taking down their website. I created the website. I hosted the website. I had no problem doing it since they were family and it ran on my server. Unfortunately, they got too much traffic. They started being very hostile to my parents. I took down their site.

I sent them a letter about how families should treat one another with a passworded zip of all their files. The password was at the bottom of the letter so they had to read it to receive it.

Got sued for six figures. They were pulling in at most $300 a month. They said that I did irreputable damage to their site and that they couldn’t get the site online because it was impossible. In court, they brought the whole database printed out.

When they showed it to me on the stand, I laughed because I told the judge, that’s all the information that they said they couldn’t receive or open. All the counts were in my favor. Best part was prior to our court session, my lawyer suggested highly that we settle out of court.

I offered $10,000. They didnt’ take it. After they lost, their lawyer asked if we could just settle on the amount from settlement. My lawyer told them to get lost. It was glorious.

Story credit: Reddit / RandomFromHawaii

But… Why Do You Need More Magic Cards?

As a public defender I defended a grown man accused of stealing Magic: The Gathering 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 8 minutes to convict him and the judge laid into my client telling him that he was the worst thief he had ever seen.

I forgot 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 need more than one deck.

Story credit: Reddit / mountaineer5710