What if a person cannot find a lawyer willing to fight against a powerful party? Hereafter, for concision, I use the noun `leviathan' to mean a magisterial, mighty party that can retaliate against lawyers. I restrict this question to First World countries (e.g., the UK), which I assume can protect lawyers from such leviathans. Suppose: A commoner suffers an injustice at the hands of a leviathan, and wishes to take legal action. The threat posed by the leviathan, prevents the victim from finding a lawyer willing to represent his case. What can this victim do? Does the law offer or guarantee him any assistance?
There should be no more lawyers in an event such as that described by the OP. The Legal Profession, by its own constitution, exists to ensure that everybody can access our adversarial justice system through a diligent and competent advocate. For example, among the responsibilities stipulated by the American Bar Association: [A]ll lawyers should devote professional time and resources and use civic influence to ensure equal access to our system of justice for all those who because of economic or social barriers cannot afford or secure adequate legal counsel. There are famous examples of lawyers, perhaps reluctantly and even at their personal peril, honoring their professional obligation to advocate in court on behalf of unpopular people and causes. One that comes to mind is John Adams defending the British soldiers who perpetrated the Boston Massacre. Of course, lawyers are people too so I wouldn't be surprised if there are counterexamples. But there shouldn't be any counterexamples unless every last lawyer in a jurisdiction resigned his professional membership and hung his head in shame.
france Yes, both for civil and criminal law, but in different ways. The general principle of civil law in France (and I believe every civil-legal-system jurisdiction) is that one is liable for any damage they cause through fault. Of course, details differ greatly between what is considered a damage, what are the standards to prove causation or fault, etc. Cour de cassation, civile, Chambre civile 2, 18 janvier 2018, 16-28.392 specifically endorsed a lower court reasoning that distinguished between préjudice moral (moral damage) and préjudice psychologique (psychological damage). The latter is about quantifiable medical damage (even if mental rather than physical), while the former covers grave breaches of wellbeing. In the case at hand, a couple was assassinated when their child was two years old; the child later developed severe psychic disorders as a result of the trauma; it was found that a compensation for the préjudice moral of losing his parents at a young age did not foreclose a later suit for the préjudice psychologique of developing mental troubles (which became visible much later in his life). To be honest, I would be extremely surprised if any jurisdiction recognized no cause of action for any type of psychological damage. There might be issues of burden of proof etc. such that in practice suing for psychological damage is unviable, but a complete bar on any civil action predicated on psychic damage seems unthinkable. Regarding criminal law, many assault-type crimes are scaled by gravity. That gravity is evaluated by days of &quot;complete inability to work&quot; (search incapacité totale de travail through that section of the penal code). While the notion has been standardized by work law cases, it also applies outside a work context when the damage prevents one from doing basic life actions (children, retirees or the unemployed can be subject to a &quot;complete inability to work&quot;). Whether the damage that caused it was physical or mental is irrelevant. Two notes though: physical damage resulting from assault is more easily quantified by that scale than mental damage. If a mob boss breaks your bones, you spend one month in the hospital, and then you get out roughly healed; it’s easy to say that it cost you one month of your life. If the same mob boss kills your wife in a gruesome manner, you might be haunted for life, but still be able to work, feed yourself etc., past one or two days of shock. &quot;Low-level&quot;, long-lasting damage is not well-measured that way. quantifying the duration of a &quot;complete inability to work&quot; depends on the victim’s active cooperation with the prosecution (such as going to see a doctor to get a certificate). That is possible because the civil and criminal causes of actions are usually joined in a single trial, during which the victim will try to prove injury. (It is possible for the victim to open a separate civil trial, but that’s usually not a good idea. The same exact remedies are available by joining in the criminal trial; usually the prosecutor has the same goals as you in proving the facts, so why not let them do it and save some lawyer fees?) It would probably not be reasonable in a common-law system with separate trials. It also breaks down in certain cases (e.g.: in a good fraction of spousal abuse cases, the victim refuses to testify against the accused).
Interesting question. I routinely write wills that authorize the executor to destroy property that has no significant economic or sentimental value, but I've never encountered a case where a testator or testatrix has directed that property be destroyed and I've never seen a reported case (or even a news report) in which that has happened. To the extent that an estate is solvent, there is no reason that a creditor could complain and if the destruction was done in a safe manner (as opposed to burning down a house or something like that without consulting the fire department) I'm not sure that there would be a public interest in doing so either. There are many religions that had a practice historically of burying someone with grave goods, so there are reasonable First Amendment freedom of religion arguments for allowing such a practice if it had a religious basis. And, if no interested party objected, I don't see how anyone could stop the executor from acting, unless the property to be destroyed was, for example, evidence of a crime, in which case it would be a crime to destroy it and the provision of the will would be void because it was a crime to carry it out. If an executor sought permission from a court to carry out this instruction, the court might require a public notice of the planned destruction to give notice to any third party who might claim an ownership interest in the property allegedly belonging to the decedent. On the other hand, usually, all interested parties in an estate can agree to act contrary to a will by unanimous consent, in which case no one would have standing to fight for the provision in court (unless it was considered a charitable bequest, in which case a state attorney general or an advocate appointed by the court with the "will" as the client could defend it). Given the strong public policies in the law disfavoring "waste" (i.e. useless destruction of property) such a provision could be held to be void as against public policy (similarly, bequests contingent upon marriage decisions are now void as against public policy).
You can't normally ask the court to "recuse" an attorney, because "recusal" is normally restricted to the judge leaving the case. The more common term is moving to disqualify opposing counsel.
It's no fantastic legal source, and rules may vary in different countries, but from the Wikipedia article on Attorney client privilege: Lawyers may also breach the duty where they are defending themselves against disciplinary or legal proceedings. A client who initiates proceedings against a lawyer effectively waives rights to confidentiality. This is justified on grounds of procedural fairness—a lawyer unable to reveal information relating to the retainer would be unable to defend themselves against such action. In other words, if the client's lie is related to one of the lawyer's interests (for example, if the client sues the attorney for malpractice based on the advice he was given), the lawyer can break privilege on his own behalf, thus testifying that his client lied. As to the specific case you brought up, I would say that privilege wouldn't protect the client from the lawyer discussing things never brought up. In other words, we could force the attorney to testify, since one of two things is true: The attorney really did give him that advice, in which case the client has already voluntarily given up his right to confidentiality by describing what was said between them, or The lawyer never gave him that advice, and privilege wouldn't protect a conversation between the two that never transpired.
Good Samaritan laws are not applicable to the facts Good Samaritan laws give a person civil immunity if they render aid in good faith and that aid turns out to do harm. For example, in a person incorrectly performs CPR in a genuine effort to save a life, Good Samaritan laws prevent them for being sued if the cause damage or fail to save the life. The legal paradigm in your facts is self-defence The doctrine of self-defence extends to the protection of others and allows the use of reasonable force to do so. If a jury considers that the choke hold was a reasonable response to the situation and the maintenance of it to the point of death was also reasonable then the defendant will be not guilty. There would be a lot of evidence around this and it’s difficult to see how this would go. However, for a more straightforward situation, if the defendant verbally challenged the attacker, the attacker persisted in the attack, the defendant struck the attacker, the attacker fell and cracked their skull and died, this is likely to be self-defence. Self-defence does not prevent prosecution. It is a defence that can be raised. Of course, if it seems likely that self-defence will succeed, that may be enough to dissuade the police/prosecutor from proceeding anyway.
Lawyers may break confidentiality with client permission. You can also break your own confidentiality and talk to the prosecutor yourself. The prosecutor's response is up to the prosecutor; however, they tend to not be super excited about giving immunity to a witness for the defense if they might want to prosecute the witness later (and courts often are fine with that), so the more they suspect about your true role the less likely they are to grant it. No. If the feds later find truly independent evidence (they have the burden of showing it's truly independent), they can prosecute. Some states give transactional immunity to witnesses (you can't be prosecuted for crimes you testified about for any reason), but the Fifth Amendment doesn't require it and at least the feds aren't bound by state transactional immunity. It's hard to prosecute, but is possible if prosecutors play their cards right. Yes, it does allow civil liability. There is no right against self-incrimination in civil matters, only criminal liability. If the forced testimony leads to a lawsuit that bankrupts you, too bad.
I am not a lawyer; I am not your lawyer. You do not cite a jurisdiction so this makes it very difficult to get a definitive answer. What follows is for Australia but the general principles are common law and would be applicable to other common law jurisdictions except where statues apply or case law has diverged. In the first instance, it seems that you were not party to any arrangement to pay for the electricity. So on the face of it you are not party to any contract requiring you to pay. Even if there was such an agreement: family, domestic, social and voluntary agreements (which this would be) are presumed not to be intended to legally bind the participants. Whether this presumption would be overturned would depend on the specific facts. On the face of it, there is no legal obligation to pay. Your options are: Do nothing; this puts the ball in their court, they can: Forget about it (it would then be over) Attempt to sue you with little prospect of success (which would cost them and you a lot more than $50 irrespective of who won) Do something illegal like beating you up (you really need to assess this risk) Tell everyone they know (in person and on social media) what a skiving prick you are (you could probably sue them for damages but that's not really going to happen, is it?) Pay them what they are asking Offer to pay them something less. Option 1 is likely to break any relationship you have with the person, Option 2 is likely to preserve it and Option 3 could go either way. Ultimately, like most legal questions, this is not about the law; it's about relationships ... broken ones mostly.