Judge excoriation: not fun

So, I had a judge tell me "your case is the worst of this type I've ever seen" last week. It's not a good case, but an hour of lambasting was a bit much. Plus, I had to dance around the borderline malpractice of the attorney who had the case before us. Rule of thumb: if an attorney wants you take over his file, the file sucks. Even if it looks good, there's something horribly wrong lurking in the background. I learned this in my first few years of practice. I am, however, usually ignored.

I was told that my theory of primissory estoppel was bullshit because my client shouldn't have reasonably relied upon the promises made. I was told that attorney malpractice wasn't going to fly because my client admitted that he never believed the Defendant to be his attorney, and the Defendant was known to be representing the other party. I was told that the escrow holder theory would fail because the promises were to vague to constitute escrow instructions.

Also, the biggest element of damages in the case is the 47K my client spent on his former attorney trying to recover a 50K debt. The judge laughed in my face and said that even if I could recover those fees, I certainly wouldn't be getting anywhere close to that because as a matter of law, no "breacher of a contract" could be reasonably expected to assume that someone would spend that much money in an attempt to enforce the contract.