Some people believe that there’s always a way out of even the trickiest of situations, and in many cases, they are right. Numerous individuals have found themselves looking for loopholes to get out of certain pickles, be it in school,at work, or even in a courtroom.
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There was one guy who owed $464 million in bond and his lawyers said he couldn’t pay it and didn’t have the money to pay it. He then went on to say he did in fact have the money but didn’t want to pay it so they appealed hoping to lower it. The day of the deadline, a court announced they’d be lowering the bond to $175 million. It was a crazy loophole, he escaped consequences.
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 fined and humiliated.
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!
Anti LGBT laws in Hungary missed a comma, which changed the whole meaning. The intent was that all books with a gay character should be wrapped in foil and sold separately from other books. The actual law was that if the books are sold separately from other books, they should be wrapped. Book store was fined, they went to court and win, their huge fine was dismissed .
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.
Heard of at least one case where the defendant was charged with carrying a loaded firearm without a license, but the count had to be dismissed because it turns out the dumba*s had loaded it with the wrong caliber bullet. The police lab tried repeatedly to get the gun to fire in the range using the defendant’s bullets, but even they couldn’t make it work. So technically the firearm didn’t count as “loaded” under the statute. It wasn’t quite case dismissed, because there was a lesser charge that still applied to an unloaded firearm, but it was a much less severe charge.Not sure if that’s a “loophole,” but it’s one of the funnier and more harmless get-out-of-jail-free cards I’ve seen.
IANAL but two come to mind.For a period of time in my state if you got a speeding ticket you could have a hearing and request the radar technician to testify that the equipment had been calibrated correctly. Given that there were only two technicians qualified in the state they basically never showed up, and the ticket would get thrown out.Another - a local cop got charged for catching the wrong size fish, basically poaching. Since he lied to the game officer in his statement, all prior convictions that relied on his testimony became easy appeal cases.
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? “Wal Mart.” That is not a legal entity. I think the real name was Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. or something.Case immediately dismissed. Since a witness had been sworn in, double jeopardy prevented them from trying him again.
Marvel successfully argued that mutants are not people so X-men action figures get a cheaper tariff.
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.
Not a lawyer, but in my court case my attacker talked and talked and talked for over 36 hours combined until the judge was just fed up and dismissed it all. So, I guess if you just make the judge bored enough, you win.
I got the physical evidence (a bag of d***s) thrown out because the officer reached into my client’s pocket before patting the outside first. Because that the was the only evidence that my client committed a crime, the prosecutor was forced to dismiss the entire case.
IANAL but in college we would have bonfire parties in the woods. I was friends with 2 other guys and we were all Eagle Scouts, they were stoners I was not. So the 2 stoners get caught hot boxing their car in the school parking garage, cop searches and pulls out my Machete from the previous weeks bonfire. Stoned out of their minds and freaking out they immediately tell the cops it’s mine not theirs (fair enough). I get a summons to Mickey Mouse Court (college disciplinary board) for violating handbook rule x.x.yz.Well I look up the rule and it says no knives, guns or martial arts weapons in the dorms. They basically said sign here and write a 5 page essay about why you follow the rules. I said no, I didn’t violate the rule, it was never in the dorms. They replied the parking garage counts as the dorms. I didn’t take it in the garage. My dorm is a mile away. I park close to my dorm. They said the parking lot adjacent counts. I’m like okay I park in auxiliary since there is 1 pace for every 3 residents adjacent to the building. To which they replied that lot (300 yds from the dorms) still counts as the dorms. So I replied that’s not a weapon it’s a tool you buy it at home depot and the lawn crews on campus are using them. They told me to sign and I flat out refused.They gave up and said I could go. I said where’s my tool? They initially said it had been destroyed. I’m like WTF you owe me a machete. Then turns out campus PD had it. They were surprisingly more chill about it than admin when I talked about Scouts.
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I am a lawyer. I specialize in tax and litigation (civil, not criminal tax). The biggest loophole is money. Can you pay your lawyer to be as creative and annoying as you can. It’s literally that simple.Bog down the court with motion practice, beg for continuances, and throw absolutely everything possible you can because you can. You won’t see a Public Defender or a Low Income Clinic attorney do this. There is simply not enough of them.
NAL. I got a ticket thrown out for running a stop sign. Before it was rewritten, the law stated that all 4 wheels had to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. My 4 wheels were locked up as i slid down the hill and blew straight through the intersection. Technically, the wheels were at a complete stop as my old s**tbox didn’t have ABS. The judge threw it out.
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.
Not me, but my old roommate was a lawyer and he used to get dg cases dismissed all the time because the county where he worked never maintained chain of custody.He got cases dismissed where the cops had pulled the ds from the person’s pocket, but since they couldn’t prove in court that the ds were real and were the same d*s that were confiscated the judge would throw out the case.
I once had a $500 ticket thrown out because the cop cited me to appear in court after my 18th birthday for a crime I committed as a minor.I didn’t even have to argue the point. I showed up and the prosecutor apologized and sent me on my way. Shoulda set it for juvenile court, Officer D******d.
My grandpa was a lawyer for an oil company a few decades ago. They had a huge federal case one time, and he simply went up to the judges and told them they didn’t have jurisdiction. The oil was drilled in Texas and refined in Texas, had never left the state of Texas. So there was no interstate commerce, and the federal court had no jurisdiction. He got the case thrown out “on bonk”.
As people have said. ‘Loopholes’ are rare. But this story jumps to mind. Wouldn’t take much embellishment to make a dramatic tv moment.Convicted criminal was on furlough. A program with the jail where you can be released on an ankle monitor while still serving your sentence. He cut the monitor, ran and was caught. Indicted for Escape.Case gets to trial and the prosecutor puts on a pretty straightforward case. people from the jail and ankle monitor company and arresting cops testify. Then the defense moves to dismiss. Prosecution has failed to prove escape.There was actually a different law called unlawful evasion that applied to escaping off furlough program. this was extra confusing because escape is the correct charge for cutting an ankle monitor if you are serving your sentence on ankle monitor. Which you can do sometimes. But if you start in jail and get out on an ankle monitor as part of a furlough program then the crime is unlawful evasion.Prosecutor was furious. Because the defense could have dismissed the case at any point. Arraignment up to trial. But he never said anything. So the guy sat in jail for months awaiting trial on a charge he could get dismissed. Judge ordered the case dismissed.There was some small debate about whether he could be retried or not, because did double jeopardy attach if he was never actually charged with the right crime? But the DA wasn’t going to highlight the embarrassment and just let it go. A crime (and slam dunk case) with a 6+ year sentence dismissed for a few months in jail. .
Not an attorney/courtroom story, but still a kind of legal loophole.I knew a guy that was drinking a beer while driving home one night. The conditions were snowy and he slid off the road into the ditch. He called for assistance and before the police and tow truck arrived he got out and put the six-pack on the hood. He made sure they saw him take a drink from the open bottle while he was standing outside the car as they pulled up.He told them sliding off the road like he did shook him up and he decided to drink one of the beers to calm his nerves. They had no way to prove that he was drinking it while driving.
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.
There really aren’t loopholes like that where people dramatically win a case in court based on a word in a statute no one else read or whatever it is you’re thinking of.Closest thing I can think of…I knew of a criminal defense attorney that had a slight foreign accent. When he had a lost cause of a case, in court he would sometimes play up the accent heavily, pretend to understand less English than he really did, generally play dumb, etc. This was juxtaposed with one of the best prosecutor offices in the country who were all very polished. His hope was the jury might feel sorry for his client and acquit him even if they thought he was guilty because it felt like he never had a fair shot.It was a fine line to walk to do that and not p**s off the judge though lol. .
I went to court and watched my lawyer boldly lie… He asked me something before going in that I confirmed and stated the exact opposite to the judges face. When we were leaving a couple other lawyers complimented him on his speech. Most of them lie and everyone knows it… Whoever is the better lier often wins and it is acceptable which is a bit of a loophole if you ask me.
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Ieva Pečiulytė
Rūta Zumbrickaitė
Gabija Saveiskyte
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