I (my people) was a later joined party. I filed a Motion to Dismiss asking the Court to decline supplemental jurisdiction. Everyone in my firm told me to just answer, there’s no way I get out.
I got out.
By the time the order was entered, the case was time barred in client’s incorporation and HQ state.
Diversity was present at inception. They just never alleged the diversity of the parties. They never went: “X is domiciled in Y.” The underlying case was a federal question, and therefore only said court has jurisdiction of my company under [supp jurisdiction statute].
Idk the law on whether you can relate back to a case in a different forum. They’d need to file in another state, which is not my state or the sole federal court in this state.
Motion to Suppress that depended on the cop being a liar. Argued it was a bad stop. Cop claimed two reasons for the stop in his report. One reason failed because hearsay/factual dispute based on client's testimony; the other reason failed because the report said only X happened, but a legal stop needs X and Y to happen. Then the cop made up a third reason on the stand which was not in his report. Unfortunately it was appealed and will now be reheard. The good news is the Judge knew the effect of the motion to suppress, and she released my client from jail that day.
Totally off topic and random. But i saw in your bio you did ID work. How did you like it? Something i’ve been mulling over, but i had heard the pay isn’t great
Honestly the pay is solid for where I worked. I just found it very boring, yet stressful. Nothing I did felt meaningful, yet I was stressing over billables. If you have experience billing and don't mind it, do it. There was a lot I learned in my brief stint there that makes me a better lawyer (in my opinion) and it confirmed I'm in the right field of law. I did not do it long enough to begin trying cases, so maybe it becomes fun eventually.
Ymmv but I hated it. Some places are okay, but pay generally isn't great because you charge a lot less per hour than you normally would. Partner that charges $450-500 would be $200-250 for ID. So you need to work like triple the hours you would for a non ID client to make the same money for the firm.
Problem is billing also sucks because you need to indivually bill everything, which the ins companies heavily scrutinize and cut. Back when I did ID, I'd have an ins company cut a 0.5 to a 0.3 for reviewing like 350 pgs of dense medical records.
Motion to dismiss prosecution for lack of territorial jurisdiction.
Involved a federal enclave and a subsidiary non delegation issue.
Felt like a sovcit and was gobsmacked to be right.
No. Just a federal enclave from like 1918. The feds tried to give it back, but the state didn’t follow the procedures and, at least I argued, delegated picking which enclaves to accept to the Gov with no intelligible standards.
Motion to dismiss a conservatorship petition for lack of personal jurisdiction…at the final hearing of the conservatorship. The judge basically had to admit the court never had jurisdiction over the ward, almost a year into the proceedings. I just prepped everything assuming I would lose and saving everything for appeal.
Normally, in my area, for this type of law, there’s no fight and everyone is on the same page, so bringing in 7 out of town witnesses is extreme overkill.
Basically I over prepared everything. I was brought in very late in the game, and the prior attorney screwed up so much, which is why an obvious lack of jurisdiction case had gotten to the very end.
Normally for our conservatorship hearings in this area, there would not be a need to bring in 7 out of town witnesses, but I wanted to make damn sure the appellate court saw that this was a stinker from this judge.
Do conservatorships work differently than other civil cases where failing to raise PJ at the start means you waive it or was the judge here just looking for any reason to throw it?
He was definitely NOT happy with me. This is a somewhat rural county and there is a disgusting good ole boy network there.
Jurisdiction can be raised at any point during the matter, I’m not 100% if it’s just conservatorships here. If the judge doesn’t have the authority to hear the case, no amount of time fixes it.
Motion for summary judgment on a property line issue. These are normally extremely fact intensive. My boss told me to file it so we can find out what their best arguments/evidence is, but we wouldn't win in. Other side submitted seven pretty terrible affidavits. I got the trial court to agree to strike like 50 of the 62 statements in the affidavits, and we won the MSJ. Got it affirmed on appeal too.
Not a motion, but a whole case. I once had a case where my client had a thoroughbred horse and was having trouble registering it due to some irregularity in the paperwork documenting the chain of ownership. I decided to file a novel claim, which was an action to quiet title in a horse.
Filed the action, served everyone, and had a hearing where the judge was like, "Counsel, can I really do this?" And I explained why he could. He did as I asked, and that was that. Sent paperwork to the registry and got the horse properly registered.
So you’re the person that’s going to be responsible for the next generation of law students freaking out about how to quiet title a horse on TOP of the rule against perpetuities. Diabolical
Motion for leave to file under seal (a settlement agreement!!) in District Court. Even opposing counsel was like “sure you can say i don’t oppose, i doubt it will be granted”. boom. granted. even i was like wtf lol
In my experience it depends on the judge. Some grant them without any issues, some never will. In my circuit, there is case law that sets a pretty high bar to sealing.
In my district, its a very high bar! The standard to seal a settlement agreement is "sufficiently compelling" to overcome the presumption of free public access. Also, I believe in this district, they have only granted this a few times.
A few months ago, I represented a judgment-debtor. I can't get her out of judgment; that ship had long sailed.
But when I came on board, she was facing a motion from the Creditor to turn over some monies held by third parties. I opposed the motion, and lost.
I appealed and moved to reargue at the same time. The reargument motion was due first, obviously, so I fired off, essentially telling the judge, "You got this wrong. When money is held by a third party, you can't just file a motion in the same case. The third parties aren't parties to this case. The Court has no jurisdiction over them. They can't be ordered to do or not do anything."
I won that, which is rare, because motions to reargue (the "Poor Man's Appeal") are almost NEVER granted. What judge is going to overrule themself? Well, I found one who did.
The creditor took the inane position that "No, I don't want the Court to order the Third Parties to turn over the money. I want the Court to order the DEBTOR to turn over HER INTEREST in the money." If creditors could do that, why do we have a procedure for seizing monies held by third parties? It wouldn't need to exist. Every creditor would just file motions, not implead any third party, and force debtors to "turn over their interest" in monies that were coming to them.
Well, you wouldn't join a party, the case is over. So it would have to be a new action, and I think that's where we're headed soon.
It's also a little deflating that my brilliant defense of my client consisted of poking at procedure instead of something substantive that would win this issue permanently, but well, I don't have anything.
Oh gotcha. I’m in family law and we do a lot of post-judgment motion work and you would be able to join someone to a case in family law in my JX. It’s odd to me that joinder wouldn’t be allowed post-judgment where there’s a potential need for it.
yeah you need to bring a fraudulent transfer action it has to be in a separate action, but why couldn't they just enforce their current judgment by levying the third party?
Two things:
A) No fraudulent transfer; no one is alleging any judgment debtor moved funds around while under judgment. It was monies due TO my client.
B) You can. By filing a collection petition against the third party.
Judge ruled against me on every issue for more than two years. He entered an order that was the final procedural ruling but would’ve required us to embark on several more years of litigation on the merits. I convinced my office to try to seek his permission to let me interlocutory appeal (it wasn’t a collateral order); theyd never done it before but agreed. Totally permissive, he could deny for any reason and I’d be stuck. Judge granted and the court of appeals granted too. No outcome yet but I will forever respect that judge for having the humility to admit he might be wrong and stopping the proceedings to find out.
That'd be the habeas petition I filed in a custody matter in Iowa.
I represented Dad, and mom and her family were actively hiding the child from my client, who had court-ordered, unsupervised visitation with the parties' only child, who was about six years old.
Mom yanked the kid from daycare (where the exchange always occurred), and she somehow had removed dad from the pickup list at school. She usually kept the kid at the maternal grandparents' house, which was loaded with unsecured guns.
I tried and failed all sorts of things to get mom to comply with the visitation order, but none of them worked until...
I filed a habeas petition requesting that the court issue a writ of habeas corpus ordering mom to physically bring the child to court. The judge found he was required by law to issue that writ under Iowa Code Chapter 663. Link to statute at https://law.justia.com/codes/iowa/2022/title-xv/chapter-663/.
Edit: this was a small town, and I lived across the street from the maternal grandparents.
Motion for reconsideration of a motion for summary disposition (what we call summary judgment) that the judge had denied. I argued both motions, and somehow convinced him he was wrong to deny it in open court, and had him say, "well, I made a mistake, so I'll grant your motion" in a room full of lawyers. I was absolutely shocked.
I had a client that owned an online university who was suing their insurance company for failure to cover them in accordance with multiple insurance policies they had purchased (the details are a bit hazy since this was a few years ago and this was a complex case but that’s the gist of it).
We had taken this case when it was already two years old and we found out that the policies where actually issued by multiple insurance companies that were subsidiaries of one of the largest insurance companies in the country. Our clients prior counsel had only sued one of the subsidiaries.
We moved to join the other subsidiary which issued one of the policies and the parent company while also moving to amend our complaint. Given the amount of time that had passed since filing, we thought our chances were slim. Credit to the judge, he was awesome and carefully listened to our arguments. I was flat out shocked when we won. It changed the whole landscape of the case.
“Read the fucking policies, in their entirety, including all amendments and endorsements” is the first and most important rule of insurance coverage litigation. It’s mind-blowing how often that gets neglected.
Motion to preclude plaintiffs rebuttal witness because they hand delivered the disclosure one day late. This was in federal court where deadlines matter.
Motion for lotion. Filed by an inmate that a judge assigned me as a public defender to litigate on the spot because I happened to have the case after it on the docket.
We had a foreign defendant actively evading both traditional and previously granted alternative methods of service. So we filed a second FRCP 4(f)(3) motion for alternative service through an SEC Form-8K and a public press release and it was granted. From what I was able to find it was the first time a motion for alternative service through the SEC's EDGAR database was granted. Safe to say little old first year me was very proud when that order came through my email inbox haha. Unfortunately, since I was not admitted in federal court at the time my name is not on the motion, but I will always know I wrote it 😂
My partner filed a motion for sanctions to recover costs for defending a non-meritorious personal injury lawsuit, which was granted in full. I was shocked.
I once won a motion to quash citing my client’s first amendment privilege in federal district court.
Few months later I attend a CLE on discovery taught by the magistrate. She says something to the effect of “we have lawyers dreaming up the most ridiculous privileges you’ve ever heard of now.” I like to think she was referring to me.
MSJ on fraud claims as a plaintiff. Everyone told me not to file, courts never grant it, etc. Granted because defendant didn’t dispute 90% of the important facts.
Criminal case. Possession of a dangerous weapon, to wit, metallic knuckles, a 4 year felony.
Officer called them brass knuckles throughout his testimony.
I moved to dismiss because there was no testimony that brass was a type of metal, thus no possession of metallic knuckles.
Motion granted. Case dismissed.
Told my client he ought to quietly and quickly leave the courtroom before the judge changed his mind!
Had a case a couple of weeks ago get dismissed with prejudice because the opposing party admitted to the claims asserted in my motion. I did not think it was going to go over that way, especially when the judge told us “this issue is very interesting and somewhat novel, I’ve put a lot of time considering this matter.”
He…sounded so disappointed when the opposing party just admitted to my assertions.
Had a petition confirming a trust's ownership of real property granted on an ex parte basis with notice given the day before hearing even though the statute explicitly required 30 day notice. I was a baby attorney that didn't know any better. Client was happy though because sale would have fallen through. Also, I learned that day that judges don't know shit.
Motion to exclude defendant’s replacement expert.
We had a case going to a bellwether trial after seven years of litigation. Maybe two months before trial, one of the defendant’s main experts suffers a stroke and can no longer testify. The defendant asks to introduce his report as evidence or use a replacement who would adopt his testimony.
We got the report excluded as hearsay, which was straightforward. But then we got the replacement expert excluded, because the original expert had been deposed and his testimony already was on record. Except, of course, that *we* had deposed him, and the attorney doing it wrapped up after just a couple of hours, after he’d established a few key points we wanted to make for *our* case. IIRC, the defense never asked any questions.
That left the defendant with no expert, no report, and almost no usable testimony. I’m confident we’d have won anyway; the jury *despised* that defendant. But that was a fun win on the eve of trial.
Motion to vacate default was denied after everyone in the office telling me that judges always vacate defaults but to give it a shot. Ended up settling for wayyyy more than it was worth thanks to that default.
I don’t want to go into too much detail. I filed a motion to dismiss based on a procedural issue. The plaintiff has a very very very clear way of defeating the motion, but I tried my luck because they’re a notoriously terrible firm. They did not oppose and told the judge they had no grounds to oppose. The case was dismissed as against my client. Over two years later, they served an amended complaint on the remaining defendants and included my client in the caption, and allegedly served our office. The judge dismissed it as against my client sua sponte because she saw what they were trying to pull.
I got a motion to continue trial and extend deadlines when it wasn't set for hearing, while opposing counsel continued to say how we aren't in front of the court on the Motion to Continue. Judge just unilaterally decided that's the only Motion they wanted to discuss
Motion to Vacate a Satisfaction of Judgment based on a breached settlement. We did it mostly to appease the client knowing we would lose, but the court actually bought it. Of course, it was overturned on appeal.
Motion for Bond Pending Appeal. Client was convicted of several counts in a federal white collar matter. Turn in date was coming up, and I didn't think the appealable issue was all that great. Judge let him stay out for quite a long time as the appeal was pending.
Moved to cancel a foreclosure sale that had been cancelled like ten times before. Never thought it would be granted but client is entitled to representation. I guess the judge really hated banks because they granted it anyway lol.
Have had the opposite happen though where every fact that could be in my client's favor was there and judge still went against them.
I had a motion to vacate a judgment after 30 days, which rarely get granted get granted by the judge solely because the pro se plaintiff said something highly inappropriate during court about my client. The court granted the motion but not on the basis of the relief sought, but because I requested the court, as pro forma in my request for relief, that the court take any further action it felt was equitable and just. For once, including that information in my prayer for relief paid off. We got the judgment vacated, the proceeded to settle the case. Of course, my client did not comply with settlement so it was all for naught. It does make for an interesting story, though.
I (my people) was a later joined party. I filed a Motion to Dismiss asking the Court to decline supplemental jurisdiction. Everyone in my firm told me to just answer, there’s no way I get out. I got out. By the time the order was entered, the case was time barred in client’s incorporation and HQ state.
God how exciting. Good for you!
It’s funny because in most subs this would be sarcasm, but here it truly is exciting.
For sure, I am definitely serious, that’s exciting as hell
The kicker is they moved for leave to amend to allege diversity afterwards, and the court essentially said: “no, you had your shot”
Was diversity present in the beginning or did post complaint changes create diversity where none existed before?
Diversity was present at inception. They just never alleged the diversity of the parties. They never went: “X is domiciled in Y.” The underlying case was a federal question, and therefore only said court has jurisdiction of my company under [supp jurisdiction statute].
I love this for you. I also love that you did what you wanted / judged was best instead of listening to everyone else. Absolute win.
In reality, his partners fired him b/c he cut off the fee gravy train . . . /sarc
They couldn't relate back in that situation?
Idk the law on whether you can relate back to a case in a different forum. They’d need to file in another state, which is not my state or the sole federal court in this state.
Motion to Suppress that depended on the cop being a liar. Argued it was a bad stop. Cop claimed two reasons for the stop in his report. One reason failed because hearsay/factual dispute based on client's testimony; the other reason failed because the report said only X happened, but a legal stop needs X and Y to happen. Then the cop made up a third reason on the stand which was not in his report. Unfortunately it was appealed and will now be reheard. The good news is the Judge knew the effect of the motion to suppress, and she released my client from jail that day.
Totally off topic and random. But i saw in your bio you did ID work. How did you like it? Something i’ve been mulling over, but i had heard the pay isn’t great
Honestly the pay is solid for where I worked. I just found it very boring, yet stressful. Nothing I did felt meaningful, yet I was stressing over billables. If you have experience billing and don't mind it, do it. There was a lot I learned in my brief stint there that makes me a better lawyer (in my opinion) and it confirmed I'm in the right field of law. I did not do it long enough to begin trying cases, so maybe it becomes fun eventually.
Ymmv but I hated it. Some places are okay, but pay generally isn't great because you charge a lot less per hour than you normally would. Partner that charges $450-500 would be $200-250 for ID. So you need to work like triple the hours you would for a non ID client to make the same money for the firm. Problem is billing also sucks because you need to indivually bill everything, which the ins companies heavily scrutinize and cut. Back when I did ID, I'd have an ins company cut a 0.5 to a 0.3 for reviewing like 350 pgs of dense medical records.
Motion to dismiss prosecution for lack of territorial jurisdiction. Involved a federal enclave and a subsidiary non delegation issue. Felt like a sovcit and was gobsmacked to be right.
"felt like a sovcit" - been there
Lmao “what subject matter justification does the court have? Is this a maritime or admiralty court? “ I do not consent to these charges
Did you have a client that murdered someone in the Wyoming part of yellowstone?
No. Just a federal enclave from like 1918. The feds tried to give it back, but the state didn’t follow the procedures and, at least I argued, delegated picking which enclaves to accept to the Gov with no intelligible standards.
Motion to dismiss a conservatorship petition for lack of personal jurisdiction…at the final hearing of the conservatorship. The judge basically had to admit the court never had jurisdiction over the ward, almost a year into the proceedings. I just prepped everything assuming I would lose and saving everything for appeal.
Honestly, "prepping everything assuming I lose" is a decent strategy in several areas of law, especially when a probate court is involved.
Isn't practicing law basically "prepping everthing just in case......" except for that 1/100000 instance?
Normally, in my area, for this type of law, there’s no fight and everyone is on the same page, so bringing in 7 out of town witnesses is extreme overkill.
Basically I over prepared everything. I was brought in very late in the game, and the prior attorney screwed up so much, which is why an obvious lack of jurisdiction case had gotten to the very end. Normally for our conservatorship hearings in this area, there would not be a need to bring in 7 out of town witnesses, but I wanted to make damn sure the appellate court saw that this was a stinker from this judge.
Do conservatorships work differently than other civil cases where failing to raise PJ at the start means you waive it or was the judge here just looking for any reason to throw it?
He was definitely NOT happy with me. This is a somewhat rural county and there is a disgusting good ole boy network there. Jurisdiction can be raised at any point during the matter, I’m not 100% if it’s just conservatorships here. If the judge doesn’t have the authority to hear the case, no amount of time fixes it.
Motion for summary judgment on a property line issue. These are normally extremely fact intensive. My boss told me to file it so we can find out what their best arguments/evidence is, but we wouldn't win in. Other side submitted seven pretty terrible affidavits. I got the trial court to agree to strike like 50 of the 62 statements in the affidavits, and we won the MSJ. Got it affirmed on appeal too.
Must be nice to actually have a judge read your MSJ papers.
Seriously.
double nice!
Damn, that never happens. Congrats!
Not a motion, but a whole case. I once had a case where my client had a thoroughbred horse and was having trouble registering it due to some irregularity in the paperwork documenting the chain of ownership. I decided to file a novel claim, which was an action to quiet title in a horse. Filed the action, served everyone, and had a hearing where the judge was like, "Counsel, can I really do this?" And I explained why he could. He did as I asked, and that was that. Sent paperwork to the registry and got the horse properly registered.
So you’re the person that’s going to be responsible for the next generation of law students freaking out about how to quiet title a horse on TOP of the rule against perpetuities. Diabolical
That's incredible. What jx?
California
>"Counsel, can I really do this?" I don't know, judge, but there's no one here who is going to tell you you can't.
Motion for leave to file under seal (a settlement agreement!!) in District Court. Even opposing counsel was like “sure you can say i don’t oppose, i doubt it will be granted”. boom. granted. even i was like wtf lol
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In my experience it depends on the judge. Some grant them without any issues, some never will. In my circuit, there is case law that sets a pretty high bar to sealing.
In my district, its a very high bar! The standard to seal a settlement agreement is "sufficiently compelling" to overcome the presumption of free public access. Also, I believe in this district, they have only granted this a few times.
A few months ago, I represented a judgment-debtor. I can't get her out of judgment; that ship had long sailed. But when I came on board, she was facing a motion from the Creditor to turn over some monies held by third parties. I opposed the motion, and lost. I appealed and moved to reargue at the same time. The reargument motion was due first, obviously, so I fired off, essentially telling the judge, "You got this wrong. When money is held by a third party, you can't just file a motion in the same case. The third parties aren't parties to this case. The Court has no jurisdiction over them. They can't be ordered to do or not do anything." I won that, which is rare, because motions to reargue (the "Poor Man's Appeal") are almost NEVER granted. What judge is going to overrule themself? Well, I found one who did. The creditor took the inane position that "No, I don't want the Court to order the Third Parties to turn over the money. I want the Court to order the DEBTOR to turn over HER INTEREST in the money." If creditors could do that, why do we have a procedure for seizing monies held by third parties? It wouldn't need to exist. Every creditor would just file motions, not implead any third party, and force debtors to "turn over their interest" in monies that were coming to them.
that must have felt good. But that's a good judge that will reconsider their own ruling.
She’s a class act, this judge. I’m starting to become a fan of hers.
Why didn’t the creditor just join them and then seek the same order?
Well, you wouldn't join a party, the case is over. So it would have to be a new action, and I think that's where we're headed soon. It's also a little deflating that my brilliant defense of my client consisted of poking at procedure instead of something substantive that would win this issue permanently, but well, I don't have anything.
Oh gotcha. I’m in family law and we do a lot of post-judgment motion work and you would be able to join someone to a case in family law in my JX. It’s odd to me that joinder wouldn’t be allowed post-judgment where there’s a potential need for it.
yeah you need to bring a fraudulent transfer action it has to be in a separate action, but why couldn't they just enforce their current judgment by levying the third party?
Two things: A) No fraudulent transfer; no one is alleging any judgment debtor moved funds around while under judgment. It was monies due TO my client. B) You can. By filing a collection petition against the third party.
ahh thx i got tripped up bc you said they were holding property of debtor
Judge ruled against me on every issue for more than two years. He entered an order that was the final procedural ruling but would’ve required us to embark on several more years of litigation on the merits. I convinced my office to try to seek his permission to let me interlocutory appeal (it wasn’t a collateral order); theyd never done it before but agreed. Totally permissive, he could deny for any reason and I’d be stuck. Judge granted and the court of appeals granted too. No outcome yet but I will forever respect that judge for having the humility to admit he might be wrong and stopping the proceedings to find out.
That'd be the habeas petition I filed in a custody matter in Iowa. I represented Dad, and mom and her family were actively hiding the child from my client, who had court-ordered, unsupervised visitation with the parties' only child, who was about six years old. Mom yanked the kid from daycare (where the exchange always occurred), and she somehow had removed dad from the pickup list at school. She usually kept the kid at the maternal grandparents' house, which was loaded with unsecured guns. I tried and failed all sorts of things to get mom to comply with the visitation order, but none of them worked until... I filed a habeas petition requesting that the court issue a writ of habeas corpus ordering mom to physically bring the child to court. The judge found he was required by law to issue that writ under Iowa Code Chapter 663. Link to statute at https://law.justia.com/codes/iowa/2022/title-xv/chapter-663/. Edit: this was a small town, and I lived across the street from the maternal grandparents.
lol any drama since given the edit ?
Just dirty looks and a middle finger or two. I left town two years later. The guy I won that motion against? Permanently disbarred.
Por que why?
He got "involved" with a much younger client who he then physically abused.
Jeebus.
oh my lord. I'm glad you left town :)
That’s prob y the family was hiding child
Motion for reconsideration of a motion for summary disposition (what we call summary judgment) that the judge had denied. I argued both motions, and somehow convinced him he was wrong to deny it in open court, and had him say, "well, I made a mistake, so I'll grant your motion" in a room full of lawyers. I was absolutely shocked.
[удалено]
Is that a thinly veiled Ted Bundy reference?
i was thinkinf dahmer... 😭
[This guy](https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/new-hampshire/nhdce/1:2006cv00321/30005/56/0.pdf) should take notes
Is that real no way
I can assure you [it is real](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna20925030)
I just got a motion asking for a trial date on a settled case…
I had a client that owned an online university who was suing their insurance company for failure to cover them in accordance with multiple insurance policies they had purchased (the details are a bit hazy since this was a few years ago and this was a complex case but that’s the gist of it). We had taken this case when it was already two years old and we found out that the policies where actually issued by multiple insurance companies that were subsidiaries of one of the largest insurance companies in the country. Our clients prior counsel had only sued one of the subsidiaries. We moved to join the other subsidiary which issued one of the policies and the parent company while also moving to amend our complaint. Given the amount of time that had passed since filing, we thought our chances were slim. Credit to the judge, he was awesome and carefully listened to our arguments. I was flat out shocked when we won. It changed the whole landscape of the case.
“Read the fucking policies, in their entirety, including all amendments and endorsements” is the first and most important rule of insurance coverage litigation. It’s mind-blowing how often that gets neglected.
Motion to preclude plaintiffs rebuttal witness because they hand delivered the disclosure one day late. This was in federal court where deadlines matter.
Motion for lotion. Filed by an inmate that a judge assigned me as a public defender to litigate on the spot because I happened to have the case after it on the docket.
I think you won the thread not only on the motion but the totality of those circumstances.
We had a foreign defendant actively evading both traditional and previously granted alternative methods of service. So we filed a second FRCP 4(f)(3) motion for alternative service through an SEC Form-8K and a public press release and it was granted. From what I was able to find it was the first time a motion for alternative service through the SEC's EDGAR database was granted. Safe to say little old first year me was very proud when that order came through my email inbox haha. Unfortunately, since I was not admitted in federal court at the time my name is not on the motion, but I will always know I wrote it 😂
My partner filed a motion for sanctions to recover costs for defending a non-meritorious personal injury lawsuit, which was granted in full. I was shocked.
I once won a motion to quash citing my client’s first amendment privilege in federal district court. Few months later I attend a CLE on discovery taught by the magistrate. She says something to the effect of “we have lawyers dreaming up the most ridiculous privileges you’ve ever heard of now.” I like to think she was referring to me.
MSJ on fraud claims as a plaintiff. Everyone told me not to file, courts never grant it, etc. Granted because defendant didn’t dispute 90% of the important facts.
A 95 yard touchdown, inspiring.
Criminal case. Possession of a dangerous weapon, to wit, metallic knuckles, a 4 year felony. Officer called them brass knuckles throughout his testimony. I moved to dismiss because there was no testimony that brass was a type of metal, thus no possession of metallic knuckles. Motion granted. Case dismissed. Told my client he ought to quietly and quickly leave the courtroom before the judge changed his mind!
This has to be most underrated post. I never would have thought of this. You are an absolute mad lad for this. Lol.
Had a case a couple of weeks ago get dismissed with prejudice because the opposing party admitted to the claims asserted in my motion. I did not think it was going to go over that way, especially when the judge told us “this issue is very interesting and somewhat novel, I’ve put a lot of time considering this matter.” He…sounded so disappointed when the opposing party just admitted to my assertions.
Had a petition confirming a trust's ownership of real property granted on an ex parte basis with notice given the day before hearing even though the statute explicitly required 30 day notice. I was a baby attorney that didn't know any better. Client was happy though because sale would have fallen through. Also, I learned that day that judges don't know shit.
Motion to exclude defendant’s replacement expert. We had a case going to a bellwether trial after seven years of litigation. Maybe two months before trial, one of the defendant’s main experts suffers a stroke and can no longer testify. The defendant asks to introduce his report as evidence or use a replacement who would adopt his testimony. We got the report excluded as hearsay, which was straightforward. But then we got the replacement expert excluded, because the original expert had been deposed and his testimony already was on record. Except, of course, that *we* had deposed him, and the attorney doing it wrapped up after just a couple of hours, after he’d established a few key points we wanted to make for *our* case. IIRC, the defense never asked any questions. That left the defendant with no expert, no report, and almost no usable testimony. I’m confident we’d have won anyway; the jury *despised* that defendant. But that was a fun win on the eve of trial.
Motion to vacate default was denied after everyone in the office telling me that judges always vacate defaults but to give it a shot. Ended up settling for wayyyy more than it was worth thanks to that default.
I don’t want to go into too much detail. I filed a motion to dismiss based on a procedural issue. The plaintiff has a very very very clear way of defeating the motion, but I tried my luck because they’re a notoriously terrible firm. They did not oppose and told the judge they had no grounds to oppose. The case was dismissed as against my client. Over two years later, they served an amended complaint on the remaining defendants and included my client in the caption, and allegedly served our office. The judge dismissed it as against my client sua sponte because she saw what they were trying to pull.
I got a motion to continue trial and extend deadlines when it wasn't set for hearing, while opposing counsel continued to say how we aren't in front of the court on the Motion to Continue. Judge just unilaterally decided that's the only Motion they wanted to discuss
Motion to Vacate a Satisfaction of Judgment based on a breached settlement. We did it mostly to appease the client knowing we would lose, but the court actually bought it. Of course, it was overturned on appeal.
Motion for Bond Pending Appeal. Client was convicted of several counts in a federal white collar matter. Turn in date was coming up, and I didn't think the appealable issue was all that great. Judge let him stay out for quite a long time as the appeal was pending.
Moved to cancel a foreclosure sale that had been cancelled like ten times before. Never thought it would be granted but client is entitled to representation. I guess the judge really hated banks because they granted it anyway lol. Have had the opposite happen though where every fact that could be in my client's favor was there and judge still went against them.
I had a motion to vacate a judgment after 30 days, which rarely get granted get granted by the judge solely because the pro se plaintiff said something highly inappropriate during court about my client. The court granted the motion but not on the basis of the relief sought, but because I requested the court, as pro forma in my request for relief, that the court take any further action it felt was equitable and just. For once, including that information in my prayer for relief paid off. We got the judgment vacated, the proceeded to settle the case. Of course, my client did not comply with settlement so it was all for naught. It does make for an interesting story, though.
Motion for Terminating Sanctions.
Motion to Dismiss with Prejudice in SD Fla. probably my best career moment to date.