Adventures Success Stories?

[RealSkinny]

First off, I want to make a full apology for my long absence before finally responding to this topic. Sometimes life gets in the way of the things we'd rather be doing.

Second, I want to make a half apology to Marc, and I'll explain why it's only half.

I come to this board to discuss legal topics as a hobby. For me, this is entertainment. It's a leisure activity, and once I sign off and step away from the keyboard, it doesn't continue to impact my day to day life. Often times I forget that, even though this is just a hobby for me, this is Marc's career. This is how he makes a living. While I can step away from the computer and go about my life, Marc can't. If someone comes to this board and discredits him, he has to deal with that quickly, or otherwise face the remarks dipping into his livelihood. When I realize this, I regret the way I jumped into this thread and made my inquiries about the effectiveness of Marc's legal advice. I was over zealous, especially considering there may be a career at stake here, and so for this, I do feel like apologizing.

However, I said I only want to make a half apology, and here's why. Even though I was over zealous, Marc is making a career of the legal advice he provides via his radio program, his book, and the motion templates he sells. Marc is selling a product. He's selling a service, and when a person sells a service, don't the customers have a right to know what it is they are paying for? Although I jumped into this topic a bit abruptly, I still think all of us are owed a bit of disclosure.

Going over the discussions I've had with Marc and his customers, I've noticed I've had a lot of moments of admitted confusion and misunderstanding. At first I thought it was just because I was unfamiliar with the topics on this board, but now I think the blame for the confusion rests solely with Marc. Let me pose this question: What does Marc's legal advice do for you?

Marc claims it's not about winning. None of it. Not the book, the radio program, or the motion templates. Once you're in the courtroom, you've lost. Marc is not selling "winning" advice. Marc is selling "damage control". Can any single person on this board explain what "damage control" even means? Does it mean my case will get dismissed? Does it mean my fine will be reduced? I have no idea, and I'm betting no one else does either.

This topic, despite it's maliciousness, has brought forth a valid question that deserves an answer. If I pay for Marc's legal advice, what is it I'm getting? Even by Marc's own admission, he does not give "winning" advice. So that leaves me to wonder... What service does Marc provide in exchange for my money? Damage control? I don't know what that is. I'm just going to pose it as a straight forward question, because I think we all deserve a little disclosure.

If I pay for Marc's services, what benefit do I receive?




I also feel obliged to finish what I started. I questioned the usefulness of Marc's advice because it appeared, at least to me, that some of the challenges to Marc's legal conclusions made earlier in this thread showed real validity. I was told that I was out of my element and I should familiarize myself with what was going on before I responded. So I did. Here's what I've found:

There was some evidence to support both sides. There's some evidence to support the position that Marc's advice doesn't actually help you win in the courtroom, and may actually cause you to incur greater fines or punishment than you would have without it. There's also some evidence to support the claim that Marc's advice can help you get your cases dismissed. Unfortunately, I've found the evidence against Marc is fairly strong, while the evidence supporting Marc is mostly Anecdotal. I think this will be easiest to show if we compare.

First we have two cases that weigh against Marc. In this thread, on page 4 http://marcstevens.net/board/viewtopic.p...0&start=45, someone already posted a link to court documents featuring a case that Marc himself cited. Those documents feature an actual court opinion that goes over many of Marc's biggest arguments and dismisses them one by one. The court opinion refers to the arguments as "frivolous" and "sophistry". There was also a claim that the argument resulted in Marc's client receiving an additional $6,000 fine.

The reason this evidence is so strong is because it's an actual court opinion, written by a Judge who heard Marc's arguments. If you want to know what's going to happen to you when you use Marc's advice in the courtroom, you can't get a better prediction than this. Does it matter if the Judge is wrong? Does it matter if the Judge is being contradictory or hypocritical? No, it doesn't. I've asked many times before if the point of Marc's advice is to reveal the hypocrisy of the courts. He said no. The point is damage control. Unless having your case called sophistry and receiving a $6,000 fine is damage control, this is a strong piece of evidence that Marc's advice does not work in practice

Here we have another court opinion. http://marcstevens.net/board/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2723 In this case, the court once again considers one of Marc's legal theories and rules against it. This one features the corpus delicti argument. Does that mean it will never work? I can't tell you for sure, but here's one time where we have definitive proof that it did not work.

So do we have any proof that Marc's advice has had at least some degree of success? The kind we might refer to as damage control? Sort of. I hate to be rude about this, but the evidence supporting Marc is pretty thin, and I'll explain why. Here are two links he provided to show his advice does work.

Here, http://marcstevens.net/board/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=2716, we have a dismissal that was supposedly the result of Marc's advice. I say supposedly because we don't have an actual opinion. We have a document showing a dismissal, and we have a story from the defendant who claims the judge dismissed the case because the police officer did not show up, even though the defendant saw the police officer in the court house that same day. The implication here is that the court was afraid to address Marc's arguments head on. There's a few problems, though. Having a ticket dismissed because the officer doesn't show, which had the effect of unnecessarily delaying the trial, doesn't really support Marc's arguments. Anyone would have had their ticket dismissed in the same circumstances, with or without Marc's help. In order to believe Marc's advice had a hand in winning this one, we first need to believe the defendant's story about seeing the police officer in the courtroom. We have to believe the defendant was not lying, and we also have to believe that he couldn't have been mistaken about what the officer looked like. Presumably, he had not seen the police officer since he received his ticket, which was almost two months prior.

Even once we believe the defendant, we have to accept there is no other explanation except that the court was afraid of addressing Marc's argument and decided to give a dismissal instead. This already seems implausible considering we already have two examples of the court addressing Marc's arguments directly and still finding them invalid. If they weren't afraid before, why should we believe they're afraid now?

In order to accept this evidence, we need to believe the defendant's anecdote, and even then the victory is only implied. This is not nearly as strong as a court opinion that could have stated they were dismissing the case because there was no corpus delicti, or no standing.

Here's another one. http://www.marcstevens.net/board/viewtop...f=4&t=2639. In this one, we have a screen shot of the daily court docket showing a dismissal. Unfortunately, the evidence is once again anecdotal. The docket doesn't say why the case was dismissed. The poster claims it was because the officer was questioned and could not answer how many elements are in a valid cause of action. He also claims this was attempted by the following 12 people, and all of them had their cases dismissed. However, the screenshot only shows two dismissals, and one occurred before the Poster's case. The poster also reveals that it wasn't his case, it was his buddy's case, and he wasn't actually there, but we can trust the information because he's been friends with the guy for four years and he's not one to lie or distort.



So there you have it. Two court opinions against Marc, two second hand anecdotal stories in support of Marc. I don't want to tell anyone how they should weigh the evidence, but I am personally not feeling too confident about what Marc's advice can do for me in front of the judge. Marc! Is there any way you can provide something a little more concrete to show this stuff actually works? Maybe a court opinion or something comparable? I hate to be an ass about the whole thing, but I think it's time to step up and put a stop to the whole debate once and for all. It can't be that hard, right? You must have lots of stuff lying around from all the clients you helped. I think it's only fair to provide some testimonials before people cough up dough for your help.