Depending on the size of the firm, attorneys will handle anywhere between dozens and hundreds of cases a year. These cases all usually revolve around a law office’s specialty, which can be criminal law, family law, civil law, personal injury, and many others.
As a personal injury attorney from a law office like Law Associates can tell you, skilled lawyers focus on just one field, which allows them to fully understand how each case is conducted in complete detail. This knowledge includes all the possible variables and scenarios surrounding a case, which gives an attorney the ability to prepare contingency plans in case something unexpected occurs. As the saying goes, knowledge is power, and the more knowledge an attorney has over their preferred subject matter, the better.
This game plan works, but it can be a bit of an issue in the off-chance that a lawyer gets a completely unique case. For some (more optimistic) lawyers, these unexpected cases are seen as a chance to explore some uncharted territory. For others, they’re just nightmares. One thing is for sure, it’s better to just be a spectator then the conducting attorney in these “strange” personal injury cases, as shown below:
Personal foul: A man filed a personal injury claim, stating that he had been experiencing emotional suffering due to ongoing confusion. The confusion in question? His alleged resemblance to Michael Jordan, the basketball player. The doppelganger sued the former NBA star, as well as Nike – although this claim (predictably) turned out to be an air ball, and was dropped before it made much headway.
Ghost damages: A woman experienced a fall inside the Haunted House of Horrors attraction at Universal Studios, California. She claimed she had been chased by an actor in the haunted house, who continued to perform their ghostly job even after the plaintiff fell. The woman tried to sue Universal Studios, but since she didn’t experience any injuries, her case didn’t have the ghost of a chance.
A Game of Thrones: Usually, an exploding toilet is the punchline to an off-color joke, but in this personal injury case, the audience was blown away. A certain model of toilet was the source of many complaints because they would actually explode on their owners. It was found that the explosions had nothing to do with the owners’ actions, and was caused by an error in production. This led lawyers to lobby for nearly 5 million dollars for owner injuries. Of course, how they managed to discover the error is probably best left to history.
Haphazard Forecasting: In what could only be described as a series of unfortunate events, a woman saw the news forecast sunny weather and thus prepared for a sunny day. Instead what she got was rain, the flu, and a week of missed work. She sued the TV station – and she won. Maybe the news station should have predicted cloudy with a chance of lawsuits.