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[Ask HN] What to do when your lawyer lies about a crucial matter?

2 points by mandmandam ↗ HN
I'm currently dealing with a lawyer who lied to me about securing a Hearing for my case, after I paid them > $20k to secure face time with a Judge.

Turns out, when my new lawyer who replaced them asked the Judge and opposing counsel about the Hearing date, he was told there was no sign of one ever being set.

I reached out to the original lawyer for answers. They insisted, twice, that we had a hearing date set at the time their counsel ended.

When I asked once more for evidence of this, the lawyer reversed position and claimed that the date had always been tenuous, and that I had been informed of this (?!).

Real and genuine 'Always at War with Eurasia', 'There Are Four Lights' shit.

Old lawyer then contacted my new lawyer, against my express request they be left to focus on the original case. New lawyer called me to ask me to drop the matter.

The takes from r/legaladvice are that this must be my fault somehow. It isn't. The facts are exactly as stated.

Is there any hope for accountability against a lawyer within the US legal system?

PA, USA.

5 comments

[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 25.6 ms ] thread
elmerfud
It could be your fault or a misunderstanding on your part. I'm my dealings with lawyers it's always been that any concrete things are dealt with in written form. Things like hearing dates, requested information, etc...

If you have something in writing, even an email or text message from the old lawyer saying the hearing date was set, but they never set it then you have something you can use. If there's nothing in writing then it becomes the he-said/she-said scenario and likely nothing to be done.

With something in writing you might have a case of malpractice against the lawyer and you report the incident to the state bar. Lawyers are officers of the court and as such are held to a higher standard than average people. Failing to provide adequate legal counsel is one of those things they are held to.

This may apply to your current attorney because if you have something in writing then they shouldn't be advising you too drop it. As far as your old and new talking together, if it's about the same matter this would be normal. Actually all notes, communication, etc... That the old lawyer had should be given to the new one. Because that information is yours not theirs.

mandmandam
I have it in writing three times over. The lie is indeed a 100 on the insultingly obvious bullshit scale. Not an exaggeration.

As I said, they confirmed the date and insisted on it, twice in one day, before changing the story that same day - now the date had "always" been tenuous, and I "was informed" of this.

All of this is in writing, by email. I don't have the email from them to my current lawyer, but it was nothing except pushing him to push me to drop the issue. All handover was dealt with weeks ago.

Re the state bar - is it reasonable to expect fairness from them? I've seen enough wagon circling enough times. Is there anywhere I could find stats or record of their actions, to show that they actually make decisions against their own sometimes?

Thanks, btw.

elmerfud
If you have information in writing that is a confirmed date for a hearing you might want to have that email reviewed by another attorney to see if potentially your misreading that as a confirmed date or if it's a probable date something like that. Lawyers are masters of the word game. If another attorney agrees that this looks like a confirmed date and then the later emails are saying that no it was never confirmed there's a couple of things to consider before there's any practical malpractice damages that can be collected.

Did the lawyers lie to you impact you in any way financially or otherwise? If it was simply an inconvenience that whatever this entire process is was moved back a couple of months there's likely not going to be anything worth pursuing malpractice wise. Now if you had some financial venture based upon this and you planned based upon his hearing date and with it being a lie this now has cost you substantial sums money you may be entitled to some recovery for that.

You can always report to the State bar again the actual impact to you of missing a promised date due to the lawyers failure will get weighed based upon the actual consequences to you. Lawyers tend to give lawyers the benefit of the doubt I think most people working in the industry do but reporting to the State bar is at a different level. Unless this first lawyer has some very strong clout they will review it based on its merits but again it will really come down to actual impact to you over the situation what's done.

b20000
i recently had a situation where i hired a lawyer to work on an agreement. i asked him if we had to register as X in order to be able to do Y. he didn’t answer my question via email and instead put a clause in the agreement saying we declare that we have all necessary registrations required. i fired him.
mandmandam
Haha - wow.

So much of communication really is non verbal.