from Hacker News

Lawyer divorces wrong couple through dropdown selection error

by jackweirdy on 4/15/24, 6:21 PM with 31 comments

  • by danielvf on 4/16/24, 1:51 PM

    You can see the UI for UK's divorce lawyers in this training document[1] pdf. It's not actually that bad, but the payment flow only shows case numbers, not names.

    ----

    However, the headline for this article is a bit misleading. It sounds like the lawyers just divorced a random married couple, and the judge refused to undo it.

    But if you go through the article, and put together the clues like a game of Dog Crimes, you get the following sequence of events:

    1) The wife hired a speciality divorce law firm. 2) The law firm had already completed all divorce paperwork and uploaded documents into court web system for the wife divorcing the husband. 3) The law firm accidentally selected this "case" to submit and pay for, rather than another intended case. 4) Per UK law the husband would have been officially notified of the completion of the divorce. 5) The wife was not happy about this surprise. 6) The wife's law firm went to court to undo the divorce. 7) The husband hired his own lawyers to keep the divorce. 8) Given that all the paperwork was correct filed, and one member of the couple wanted to keep the divorce the judge let it stand.

    [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

  • by razodactyl on 4/16/24, 9:07 AM

    Yet we have to type the name of our repo in GitHub to confirm a deletion...

    Imagine the headaches if a life event happened in between the divorce and un-divorce. Oops.

  • by nobodyandproud on 4/16/24, 12:01 PM

    > Vardag said the mistake happened after the wrong name was clicked on from a drop-down menu on the divorce portal. She claimed that court staff had admitted this had happened a few times and that it felt like a design flaw.

    I don’t know enough, but it looks like software engineers will be blamed in short order.

    Good luck!

  • by CRConrad on 4/16/24, 7:28 AM

  • by greatgib on 4/16/24, 7:22 AM

    That is the Idiocracy in real life.

  • by mewpmewp2 on 4/16/24, 9:29 AM

    I don't understand, aren't signatures from parties involved required for this?

  • by knighthack on 4/17/24, 10:38 AM

    I am with the High Court judge on this one. There was no procedural flaw in the process; it was purely the mistake of the lawyer. The system should not be blamed, when the lawyer could have acted carefully. Hundreds of divorces can proceed a day without issue; why is one fatal mistake by one lawyer suddenly cause to blame the system entirely?

    And let's not be mistaken - the lawyer was negligent. Observe the grandstanding of the boss, however:

    > Vardag said: 'The young lawyer who made the slip with the drop down menu on the new divorce portal is one of the best of the next generation. Not sloppy, not careless. Totally committed, extremely able. That young lawyer, our brilliant young lawyer, genuinely needs support to deal with the trauma of it all.

    ...Is all that posturing necessary? "...one of the best of the next generation", really? A "brilliant" lawyer making this sort of mistake, which could have been avoided had the lawyer actually paid attention?

    If the junior was mistaken, there is no need for this sort of grandstanding. Negligence need not to be glossed over, or made as if it was not.

  • by wintorez on 4/16/24, 1:57 PM

    Bad UI can ruin lives.

  • by darepublic on 4/16/24, 5:58 PM

    The law itself feels like a bunch of bad spaghetti code that professional grifters live off of

  • by RecycledEle on 4/16/24, 9:57 AM

    They lawyer has not even agreed to fix their error.

    This is another reason society is better off without the people who become lawyers.