Recently, my neighbors and I successfully petitioned our local zoning board to deny a permit to a couple who wanted to turn a house that they owned on our street (and which wasn't their primary residence; they live in another city altogether) into an airbnb. Shockingly, we won, and the permit was denied.
The couple had thirty days to challenge the ruling in circuit court, and they eventually elected to do so, filing on day thirty. They also retained an attorney, and while I don't know when in that month-long window they hired him, I was aware that he was a solo practitioner, despite having worked at four different law firms in the last five years. I also couldn't find any cases where he hadn't worked with someone as counsel, i.e. he didn't seem to have much of a record of working on his own.
The consequences of which came into play almost immediately.
See, in my state, there's a rule on the books that basically says that when you file in court regarding a zoning issue, the complaint must be made by all of the entities (i.e. individuals and businesses) who own the piece of land in question. And while the wife of the couple had been the one to file for the permit with the zoning board (which was allowable as per the zoning board's own regulations), she was also the only one in whose name the complaint was made.
Which was really something their attorney should have caught.
Especially since the judge that the case ended up in front of had made a ruling on this exact same issue six months prior, dismissing another case (itself also appealing a denial of a permit) for failing to file on behalf of all the property owners.
Of course, the government attorney (on behalf of the zoning board) knew that, and so when they filed a motion to dismiss, that couple's attorney (well, really just the wife's attorney, since she'd left her husband's name off of it) found himself in the unenviable position of having to tell the judge "no, no, your honor, this is completely different from that case you dismissed six months ago. In that case, the landowners weren't married, and under state law a married couple is considered a single unit, and so having one spouse's name on the complaint is the legal equivalent of having them both on there."
It got worse when he started trying to define the word "the" in the context of "the landowners." Yes, really.
Needless to say, the government's motion to dismiss was granted, and to date the couple has yet to receive their permit. Something which they might have avoided if they'd found a better lawyer.
