We can’t get enough of shows like How to Get Away With Murder, Suits, and Law & Order—legal dramas are so addictive! While these crazy stories are made for TV, in real life, the drama in the courtroom is just as interesting.
From cops making mistakes when giving tickets to getting away with stealing based on a technicality, these lawyers took to Reddit to share the craziest loophole they’ve witnessed in the courtroom that actually worked. You won’t believe these wild stories!
Mistaken Identity
U/showMeYourPitties10: “I got in a no-injury car accident and gave the cops my insurance, which had both my name and my dad’s name. I’m a male with a name that is normally a female’s name. The cop wrote the ticket to my dad because he assumed who I was by the names on the insurance.
When I went to court to pay the fine, the judge told me I couldn’t represent my dad. When I explained that he was living very far away from the accident and I was the driver, the judge said well you have no ticket, and your dad obviously wasn’t the driver, so case dismissed.”
Everyone Speeds
U/chriswaco: “I’m not a lawyer, but this was a fun one to watch: Someone received a speeding ticket on Main Street in Ann Arbor.
He proves that 85% of drivers on that road drive faster than the speed limit and argues that the limit was improperly set under Michigan’s anti speed trap law. Judge agrees and ticket is thrown out. If everyone speeds, nobody does!”
Dashcam Defense
U/throwawaysmetoo: “I once escaped from a police car and the prosecutor tried to go after me for something like a class c/d felony and was furious when my lawyer’s argument was ‘naw, that was a class b misdemeanor…
He totally did that, it’s on the cop car dashcam…it films things well…but it’s a class b misdemeanor’. He’s still furious today.”
Cops’ Oversights
U/civex: “The wildest loopholes I’ve seen are really tame – the cops made mistakes. A truck driver given a ticket for driving an overweight truck over a bridge, and the cop didn’t weigh the truck.
A guy given a ticket for failure to to yield at an intersection when he did a U-turn in the middle of a highway causing an oncoming driver to rear end him. Stupid stuff like that.”
Legal Technicalities
U/Smaptastic: “Criminal defendants charged with stealing an item must be charged with stealing an item FROM someone. That someone must be a legal entity. I once represented a guy who was charged with stealing dog food. He was homeless and trying to feed his dog. Needless to say, I was sympathetic, so I was willing to pull something of a dirty trick for him.
I queued him up for trial. As soon as the first witness was sworn in, I moved to dismiss. The entity he was charged with stealing from? ‘Discount store.’ That is not a legal entity… Case immediately dismissed. Since a witness had been sworn in, double jeopardy prevented them from trying him again.”
Legal Deception
U/Pippin1505: “From LegalEagle , not a loophole but more a grievous malpractice: Some lawyers tried to use ChatGPT to write their brief. The language model hallucinated and invented court cases and references. They filed it anyway. Opposing party candidly asked the judge : ‘We don’t seem to be able to find the mentioned cases in any of the legal databases. Could they please provide sources?’
Judge frowned. Lawyers sweated , tried to play dumb and asked for time while they used again ChatGPT to write the fake cases. Judge was not amused. They got disbarred.”
Intent Loophole
U/WorkerAnt81730C: “Not a lawyer, but close to one. In law school in Finland, they were taught about a case where a man was on trial for failing to pay back a loan. His lawyer argued that he shouldn’t be convicted of delinquency (no idea what the actual terms are in English, bear with me) because he never had intended to pay the loan back in the first place. And he won the case.
The reason was because the prosecutor had made a mistake: he had prosecuted the man only for the lesser charge of being delinquent in making payments, and forgot to write up the alternative charge of outright fraud. So the court had to rule that there was reasonable doubt whether the man actually committed the act he was on trial for.”
Quack Justice
U/badgersprite: “Wild loopholes aren’t really a thing, but what is a thing that I’ve seen a lot is judges knowing absolutely NOTHING about a particular area and being convinced to make a blatantly wrong decision by a quack expert because they don’t understand the expertise of the actual, real qualified expert and therefore cannot be appropriately convinced by it.
To give a general example of where this type of thing comes up, quack experts have caused judges to send people to prison for serious crimes…because they present bunk statistics that sound really convincing that the chance of this person being innocent is like 0.000001%, and the judge (or jury) doesn’t understand statistics so they’re convinced by that.”
DIY Parking Solution
U/Shiggens: “I have a friend in Philadelphia that had a business in Northern Liberties. He owned the property that included a small street front parcel that he used for parking his delivery van. It didn’t have a curb cut and the city wouldn’t put up no parking signs.
He acquired an official No Parking sign and put up. Occasionally someone would park there for the short term but other wise it worked great and went unchallenged.”
Ticket Mix-up
U/bluestrawberry_witch: “My husband got a ticket for expired tags (total oopsie on us, we had recently moved across the state and got new jobs and just forgot) went to pay the ticket and realized the ticket wasn’t under his name or our car. Not really sure what the cops did but the only correct info on the whole ticket was our address and the make and color of the car.
Clerk at the courthouse said it can’t be fixed you have to show up for court and tell the judge to get it fixed. So husband takes day off work and after explaining the issue the judge super irritated calls it sloppy and incompetent and waives the ticket. Which was great but taking the day off work actually costed more then the ticket.”
Twin Ticketing
U/FapDonkey: “My dad and uncle are identical twins. In our state your driver’s license number is generated using a formula that includes your name, date of birth, and other basic info like that which are identical for my dad and my uncle (their first names share a first letter). As a result, the have identical drivers license Numbers. The state anticipated this possibility so all DL #s end in a -0 by default, and if there are duplicate numbers they will get a -1, -2 etc.
These are extremely rare however. My dad has the -0 license, my uncle has the -1. Since police officers just assume it ends in -0 (since 99.9% of the time it does), every traffic ticket my uncle.has ever gotten ends up going to my dad. Since he can usually prove he was not operating the vehicle, my uncle has gotten out of a LOT of tickets as a result.”
Bodycam Betrayal
U/throwawaysmetoo: “I had a case against me thrown out when bodycams were brand new and a cop had filmed himself being ADAMANT, absolutely ADAMANT about why they were searching my friend’s car (which didn’t actually have any legal backing) and then they wrote a different reason in their report and the judge was all ‘ooooooooooh no tho’.
The prosecutor had been yelling about putting me in prison for 10 years… All’s well that end’s well (cops didn’t get fired for illegal searches tho…of course).”
Loophole Hunt
U/RockySterling: “Still in law school but I’m amazed at how few loopholes there are; I’m always on the lookout but there’s usually some catch-all, some provision, some exception, some countervailing doctrine that prevents it.
The closest thing I’ve found to a clear loophole is that some items are exempted from the list of what can be seized to satisfy a judgment against you, but without specifying a maximum value. Like under NY’s CPLR 5205, even though exempt books can’t exceed $500 in value, ‘religious texts’ have no such limit, so theoretically, if you invested all your money in expensive rare bibles, they couldn’t be taken no matter what.”
Regulatory Overreach
U/Morthra: “This isn’t something new to the past year. It’s been going on for nearly a century at this point – the passing of intentionally vague laws relying on definitions that can be changed…
Famously, bump stocks were functionally banned in the US because a bureaucrat decided that they were now an NFA item, and anyone who owned one without the special permission form from the government (the tax stamp) was now committing a felony.”
Crown Jewels
“As a lawyer, I once represented a man accused of stealing a rare diamond from a museum. The security footage clearly showed him taking the gem, but during the trial, I noticed a small detail. The museum’s sign clearly stated it was closed on Sundays, the day the theft supposedly occurred.
I presented this information to the court, arguing that since the museum was closed, my client could not have stolen the diamond on that day. I didn’t have to prove he was innocent, only cast reasonable doubt on the validity of his story and the footage. It did exactly that, and he was found not guilty.”
Legal No-Man’s Land
U/LazuliArtz: “One interesting place is the zone of death in Yellowstone, where you theoretically can’t be tried for crimes. Basically, the district for Yellowstone extends very slightly into another state (from Wyoming to Idaho – edit we’re talking like a 10 square mile radius or something. It is TINY).
In the us, you need a jury from both your state, and your district. So we’d need someone who lives in Idaho, and also that district, which is… Absolutely no one. You can’t actually make a jury there.”
Hide and Cark!
“If a loan company is after your car, park it on your property behind a locked garage or behind a chained gate. Most of the time creditors won’t go to such lengths like breaking chains and damaging property just to get to your car.
Still, this isn’t very legal, especially according to some local laws, so be extra mindful.”
Questionable Victory
U/jcarlosfox: “Not a loophole, but a fun one just the same. The Defense witness destroyed my case. Destroyed it. I was going to lose. I had just one question: ‘Didn’t you offer to sell your testimony to my client?’ Answer: ‘Yes, but we never came to an agreement.’ We settled in the hall after the Defense attorney quickly asked for a recess.
His testimony killed my case. But…..His answer to my question killed his credibility. If he offered to sell his testimony to my client, but didn’t come to an agreement with my client, he might have sold his testimony to the Defense. His credibility was zero. So, the Defense folded, because that was all they had. And the judge was laughing at the whole thing. Years later when she needed a lawyer, she hired me. So, I guess she liked how I worked.”
Triple Tread Trouble
“If you want to slash someone’s tires, slash only three because the insurance companies won’t cover if its not all four tires. That way, you’re leaving the car owner to foot the bill.
It’s a sneaky way to make them pay without triggering a full insurance claim, and an extra slap in their face, if you’re really out to get some revenge.”
Parking Perils
U/nolalaw9781: “I racked up parking tickets in law school, only to find out that the district had changed but the signs were never removed. The street behind the school was in a different district-one with no time limit on parking. The neighbors didn’t want students parking for hours on end so they treated it as de facto timed parking.
I defeated the tickets but only after the contentious hearing where the hearing office asked me why I thought it was ok to park wherever I wanted despite the signs. I said the signs don’t matter if they’re not legal and he said enforcement (meter maids) go by the signs, not the map. I asked if I could just put up signs wherever I wanted to not have people park and they would enforce it? He didn’t have answer for that one…”
Dotted Line
U/Squigglepig52: “I had a fairly major ticket dismissed once. Reckless driving, 6 points. I fought it because I had issues with the charge… Never got the court notice, ‘convicted’ – I had to go to a JP just to get a chance to have my day in court. I got lucky – because I was able to point out where the cop had filled things out wrong, basically falsifying s—.
JP recognized the cop’s name. So, I go to court, get called up,and the cop walks out of the court, judge tosses the ticket. The judge was pissed off at the cop, I guess he was known for this kind of c—. My loophole wasn’t strange – it was he had signed off on the ticket without having me sign my parts.”
In 2012(?), tribal courts were given sentencing power of up to 1 year/$5000 per charge and 3 years/$15000 total. So they’re able to do a little bit now, but non-Indians can still move for dismissal over jurisdiction. This does cover things like speeding and petty crime.”
