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.
The latter is what members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community recently discussed, when one of them, a netizen going by the name of ‘Meme_Collector_GG’, addressed the lawyers in the group. The redditor asked them what has been the wildest loophole they’ve ever seen exploited in a courtroom that succeeded, and the respondents shared quite a few of them, which you can find on the list below.
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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.
I got in a no injury car accident, 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 females name. Cop wrote the ticket to my dad because he assumed who I was by 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.
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 love that Legal Eagle episode. I definitely felt Fremdschämen for those lawyers.
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!
I agree I believe it is not generally an illegal act to keep up with normal flow of traffic.
Not me, but a professor I had, who specialized on advocacy for victims of human trafficking (basically, helping victims of trafficking avoid deportation).
A salon was raided in connection to a suspected human trafficking ring. The tip turned out to be good, multiple people were arrested, and several victims were taken into custody.
Among them was a 4 year old boy. None of the victims knew him, "he helped clean the salon." Traffickers wouldn't fess up as to where he came from. *The kid didn't know his own name, where he was from, where his parents were, or where they were.* When the judge asked the kid for his name, he replied "Spiderman!" When they asked for his *real* name, he told them "Peter Parker!" Yeah, you get the idea.... anyway, prosecution wanted him gone because he was in the US illegally. Not sure where prosecution thought he'd get sent, but whatever.
Now here's a neat thing.... there's a federal statute on refugee eligibility. This particular statute hadn't been cited in over 60 years, but for all intents and purposes was still good law. The statute on question basically says, "if a victim of human trafficking is an unaccompanied minor is under X age and does not know their country of origin, they are to be granted asylum immediately, no court discretion." Now I have to emphasize, this law hadn't been used in literal DECADES, and was effectively forgotten by courts and legislature as a past relic that somehow slipped through immigration reforms over the years. But it was still valid.
My professor intended to cite this statute. The prosecutor was terrified of creating new case law, and offered to drop charges if this statute wouldn't get brought up. Professor agreed, bc client's interests.
In a strange twist of fate, the prosecutor died, and the newly assigned prosecutor said he would not honor any preexisting deals. Prof is like, "fine, let's make some case law!" New prosecutor panics and asks to go back to the original deal, which is accepted.
I suppose it's not a loophole, but very interesting IMO.
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.
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…
It really bothered me that the school made a big deal about getting a dispensation on parking time during exams, because the exams were an hour longer than you could park.
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.
Harmless? Maybe no crime was committed but there was intent, surely? I hope the gun was confiscated at the very least.
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.
ALWAYS examine your citation for errors. I took mine to court and pointed out to the judge that the address shown for the violation was not valid. He left the bench, consulted the city map on the adjoining office wall, and dismissed the ticket on the grounds that the address didn't exist. I have no idea what the officer was thinking when he wrote it. Another one: I was driving on a stretch of road that had a fairly low speed limit. Suddenly, a police officer ON FOOT jumped off the curb to stand in front of my car, waving his arms and gesturing for me to pull over, which I did in a very shaken state. He wrote me a speeding ticket. When I described the stop to the judge, including the way the officer endangered himself and me as well as other drivers in addition to his literally "eyeballing" my alleged speed, the ticket was dismissed.
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.
Not "not people", they argued that they weren't human, case failed several times but succeeded in 2003. It's because human toys were considered dolls and nonhuman toys as toys, which commanded different tariffs. The tariff law has since been changed and both dolls and toys are charged the same rate. Yes, the argument that the X-Men (and the Fantastic Four) were not human did raise a lot of "WTF?" at the time, givn that the point of the comics is that they absolutely are human.
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.
Friend was pulled over for expired plates driving his Mom’s car. Got a ticket. Friend went to court, tried to argue his case, but was told he can plead guilty or innocent, and no deal on a lesser charge was offered.
So he pled innocent, and went to trial. (Side note: this guy is brilliant. Studied physics in college, worked with reactors for a bunch of years, then gave up his high income job to go to law school.)
In court during the short trial, the friend argued his ticket for expired plates is a tax violation, rather than a moving violation, and no one can be held liable for another person not paying their taxes. Somehow the judge agreed. Tossed the ticket, and thereby forced the district attorney to cancel the tickets of several other people who received tickets for similar violations.
I was told law makers were forced to rewrite the law 6 months later.
Not buying it. The issue isn't being responsible for "taxes" for expiring plates, but operating that car on the public's roadways. I can imagine a slow-witted DA getting caught by surprise by a novel argument; I can't imagine him conceding all future cases.
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.
Juries are a failed system. Over half of the jury I was part of voted against getting explained what "corroboration" means because they couldn't be arsed to listen to the explanation the first time, and "wanted to go home because it's Friday" when we get it explained to them again. They let the guy go because 'there's no evidence' (the corroboration WAS the evidence). I could have lived with that, hadn't I seen his smug grin. He will molest girls again, and worse than that, now that he learned how easy it is to get away with it. Juries would work if people would take the duty seriously, but the case can be in the hands of the same people who call themselves "trueblood" or think that jury duty is suuuuuuuuuch a punishment for them. Sickening, really.
Not a lawyer but I once got a ticket for having my dog off leash at a park in Denver while the park rangers let the other offender go with a warning because they felt bad the dog only had 3 legs. I successfully argued that my rights had been violated under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment that requires law enforcement to provide a reliable reason for treating similarly situated people differently. We both had dogs, both off leash, in the same park, at the same time, stopped by the same officers in a single interaction. The law does not exempt 3 legged dogs from being on a leash so they were forced to throw my ticket out.
As a volunteer ranger in our nature parks I see enough horrible damage done by dogs whose owners are too entitled to follow the "on leash at all times"-rule. We have dedicated areas in the woods for dogs to play, and the entire beach, so no reason for complaints. But I don't see a three legged dog hunting a deer, about to giving birth, and pull the fawn out of her by force and kill it.
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.
That guy sounds a natural for the Senate, they would do great at filibusters
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.
Reminds me of a cop threatening to arrest me for having a knife on me. The search was legit, I was smoking a joint when he walked around the corner but it was pretty finished and I didn't have anything else on me so he was pissed and just looking to get me. But I had a knife on me because I was coming from work. Also had a measuring tape, 2 screwdrivers, a handful of screws and such. When the car came to pick me up, it was a more senior officer driving. After asking what the story was, he told the first guy to let me go. That having a blade on you for a legitimate reason is not a crime.
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.
NAL; just a bibliophile and a fan of American History.
In a book about Coke County Texas by a lady named Yarborough, she mentioned that a young man was taken before the judge in the small town for “firing his gun in the street”.
The young man was brought before the judge who pulled up the statute and read it and it said essentially “it is an offense to discharge a firearm in the streets of Robert Lee, Texas”.
He then asked the boy to describe exactly what he was doing, why, and where he was.
The boy said, “Well… I was standing in the lot on this side of the street and saw a badger in the lot on the other side of the street in the other lot. I pulled out my rifle and shot the badger.”
The Judge said he was free to go as “he had not been standing *in the steet* when he shot, and thus had not broken the law.
Not a lawyer. This happened about 10 years ago in Wayne PA. Was in court testify against a former employee for stealing. The case befor his was a drunk driving case. It was open and closed case. Lady blew twice the legal limit after roaming into a parked car at a gas station. The prosecutions case was simply the arresting officers testimony as nd the breathalyzer results. After the prosecutor questions the officer and rests his case you could see the defendants lawyer chuckle. I thought it was odd and then I found out why. Defending lawyer stands up and spouts off some PA code and asks the judge for for an immediate dismissal. Judge grants it but is visibly pissed. He then immediately takes recess and calls both the officer and prosecutor into his chambers. It was about three minutes of the judge beratingvthem both and the whole courtroom could hear it.
It turns out that at some point during the prosecutions case either he was supposed to ask the officer or the officer was supposed to say that he had been specifically trained to use the breathalyzer and detect impaired driving and by failing to do so the prosecution failed to meet the necessary requirements for the conviction. It was wild.
Not me, but my old roommate was a lawyer and he used to get d**g 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 d***s from the person’s pocket, but since they couldn’t prove in court that the d***s were real and were the same d***s that were confiscated the judge would throw out the case.
idk why but whenever i see d***s i just automatically think they are dil dos its weird
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.
I'm not in favour of technicalities but, if the prosecutors can't get their behaviour to fit the laws, it makes sense for them to get slapped down. But, yes, I'd be a happier bunny if OP hadn't deserved the ticket in the first place...
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. .
My experience is double jeopardy applies because it's the same set of facts/circumstances..but it's probably debatable. For example if a person goes to trial on a number of charges and is acquitted on some charges but the jury gets hung on the other charges. In a re-trial double jeopardy prevents the DA from re-trying the acquitted charges and from adding charges.
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.
This may not have translated well. In English, if being delinquent with regards to a loan means you have missed a scheduled payment. It doesn't matter if it is the first, the last, or somewhere in the middle. It also doesn't matter about the person's intentions. They might have been planning on paying the whole thing, but became involved in a traffic accident, and ended up in a coma when the payment was due. They might have decided to default on the whole thing. In both cases, they would be delinquent, although the person in a coma would certainly have mitigating circumstances.
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. .
You're wrong. I won an alimony case over a single word, "until". After a contentious divorce, I was ordered to pay alimony to my ex-wife "until" various things happened; death, remarriage and most importantly here, cohabitation. Shortly after the divorce she had a boyfriend move in with her briefly and tried to conceal it. I found out and subpoenaed him to testify. She argued that it was only briefly and that the alimony should continue after they broke up and he moved out. She lost and it's now a cited case that defines "until".
A lawyer acquaintance knew of a few places where there were 'no parking' signs but the areas were somehow missed in the by-laws. He defeated all the tickets.
Not a lawyer but I got pulled over driving a buddy’s car at 3am on a back road I wasn’t familiar with, daytime running lights on so no brake lights (oops) and drove right by someone else they had already pulled over. Knew I was f****d when they pulled out after me. Said I was acting sus, demanded to search or else the dog was gonna be called in, found my weed and set it on the hood of the car. Filled out a little slip saying it was weed etc etc. Well the court date is here and my lawyer asks the first cop if he did a field test to see if it really was thc weed or just hemp? He said he thought he did. They send that one back and call out the other cop, ask him the same question and he answers that he isn’t sure, and doesn’t remember if it was done or not. I also stated I did not see a field test done to confirm that there was thc present and the judge scoffed at the cops and dropped it. Phew! Only spent a couple weeks in jail for the other charges!
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.
And this is why a lot of lawyers / attorneys go into politics .... it's still lying but on a grand scale .....
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changing the word cheating to loophole doesn't make cheating any better.
changing the word cheating to loophole doesn't make cheating any better.
