Lawyers in Urban Legends

Some of you know that my day job is in a law firm.  This means that I hear, and even collect, lawyer jokes.  This one was passed around my office this week, and I just had to share:

BEST LAWYER STORY OF THE YEAR.


Charlotte , North Carolina :

A lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars, then insured them against, among other things, fire.

Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars and without yet having made even his
first premium payment on the policy the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company.

In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost "in a series of small fires."

The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason, that the man had consumed the cigars
in the normal fashion.

The lawyer sued.. and WON!

(Stay with me.)

Delivering the ruling, the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. The
judge stated nevertheless, that the lawyer held  a policy from the company, which it had warranted that
the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what
is considered to be "unacceptable fire" and was obligated to pay the claim.

Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid
$15,000 to the lawyer for his loss of the cigars lost in the "fires". 

NOW FOR THE BEST PART..

After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of ARSON!!!

With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was
convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a
$24,000 fine.

This is a true story and was the First Place winner in the recent Criminal Lawyers Award Contest.

.....

Okay, it's NOT  a true story. It's so much not a true story, and has been around so long (early 60's at least) that Brad Paisley did a song about it.  Snopes will tell you all about that. 

Besides, even if the lawyer did pull that stunt, they'd never be able to convict him of arson because the finding that the insurance company had to pay would have included a finding that the fires weren't arson....

But I found it amusing enough to inflict it on all of you anyway.


 

Comments

[Carrie K]

Maybe not true but wouldn't it have been great if it was? That's a good lawyer story.