The "plus other stuff" is extremely important here. Fraud requires a knowing deception with an intent to deceive. A false statement of fact is not fraud. The speaker must know what he says is false, and me must make the statement with the intent to deceive you. What do you mean by "lie?" If an attorney tells you that you have a slam dunk case and the law is clearly on your side to get you to hire him, when in fact the law is clearly against you, this is fraud. On the other hand, if the attorney says he thinks you have a strong case, this is not fraud. A lawyer is hired to analyze the law an make legal arguments. If the law was always clear, we would not need lawyers.

OK - example: "motor vehicle codes" were written to regulate commercial use of the roads, which means only (1) hauling freight for hire and (2) carrying passengers for hire. This is why you sometimes see old pictures of vehicles with a sign "NOT FOR HIRE." However, government-employed attorneys have lied about the law and told us (through high school driver's ed programs, police training programs, training programs for other govt employees, and "judicial education" materials for judges) that "motor vehicle" means everything with wheels and a motor, regardless of use. This fraud is hard to catch because in most states, the Revised Statutes have been "simplified" so they no longer explicitly state that a "motor vehicle" is only a vehicle used for commercial purposes.

Another example: In 1937, when SSN's and EIN's were being set up, the New York Times quoted unnamed IRS officials as saying there was a $10,000 fine and 1-year jail term as punishment for not signing up for an EIN. Completely false, there was and is no such penalty.

It's not the Times that committed the fraud in that case, it's the unnamed IRS officials.

"The courts agree" ? Please show me a case (preferably an appellate case, since the lower courts are so often overturned) ruling that a vehicle that is not used for hauling freight, and is not carrying passengers for hire, is a "motor vehicle" under the relevant Code.

Jurisdiction - any state in the Union. The relevant code - the motor vehicle code of the state that the court is in. (I would have thought it was obvious that the courts do not refer to irrelevant codes!) Show me any case (preferably appellate) where any court has ruled that a vehicle that is not used for hauling freight, and is not carrying passengers for hire, is a "motor vehicle" under the Code that the court is using. Is the question clear yet?

By definition, fraud is limited to matters involving intentional false statements of FACT upon which another personally reasonably relies to his or her detriment. Incorrect statements of LAW (even if intentional) cannot, by definition, be fraudulent. Facts can be concealed, but applicable laws cannot, since they are publicly available. Accordingly, no one can "reasonably" rely upon any one else's statements concerning the applicable law. From your ongoing "questions" in this thread, however, it appears your real issue is that you DISAGREE with the law that is in place, not that you are actually claiming anyone is misrepresenting what the law is.

Fraud must be done with an intent to deceive another. In this case I would say more malpractice. I would need more information to answer the question more fully. What I need to see here is intent. Absent that you have a case of a careless or stupid lawyer. That falls more toward malpractice. Also was the act done to benefit the lawyer or another person? This would in turn lean towards fraud. It depends though.

If someone who was driving a non-commercial vehicle were accused of violating a statute that only applies to "motor vehicles," and if he were to raise the question, then the question of whether a non-commercial vehicle (or, at least, that specific non-commercial vehicle) was or was not a "motor vehicle" as defined in the Code WOULD be within the purview of the court. I thought this was what we were talking about all along! The literal text of the statutes nowadays do appear to define "motor vehicle" broadly, because they have been reworded and simplified over the years. However, when first written, they much more clearly referred only to vehicles in commercial use. To find the true definition, we cannot rely solely on the modern-day text but must look at the original and trace through the changes, and also look at legislative histories to see whether the committee that did the rewriting intended to change the meaning or not. There is a case from Oregon, which I will dig up if I get sufficiently motivated, in which the defendant ran a stop sign, and the court made clear that he wasn't guilty because the stop sign was only for "motor vehicles" and he wasn't hauling freight or carrying passengers. It was back in the days before the fraud became widespread. The widespread misrepresentation was apparently caused by pressure from trucking companies, which wanted to spread the costs, and insurance companies and municipalities, which wanted increased revenues. Maybe we can get back to the original question: Assuming for the sake of the question that a statute, such as for example the motor vehicle definition, were misrepresented in the way I have described, does that count as fraud?

ORS 801.360 which nowadays, on its face, does not say how broad its application is, however as you know, that does not mean that its application is broader than its context -- and the breadth of the context is the real question. It can be found in Title 59 of Business Regulations, Part II, also known as the Oregon Motor Vehicle Code. Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. The financial incentives were the same everywhere, the nature of the players were the same everywhere, leading to the same result everywhere. BTW: If you find some cases, that is not the end of the matter, as you know if you've been around the block. There is plenty of contradictory case law on various subjects. So one attorney says "The statute obviously applies to everybody" and the opposing attorney doesn't bother to do the necessary research to establish the context of the statute -- then the judge writes that the statute obviously applies to everybody -- so what? That's why I don't want to forget about my original question.

Wow! You actually read the statute! What an achievement! And you completely disregarded everything that I have been saying -- about the original form of the statute and the successive rewritings and simplifications, and the legislative committees' comments about whether they intended to change the meaning; about context as part of Title 59 of Business Regulations Part II. Yes, I know it doesn't say "commercial" or "freight" or "passengers" in the plain text. I didn't cite it so you could point out the obvious, I cited it so you could find the case you kept promising (now it's a state Supreme Court case?) where the opposing attorneys fully briefed the issue, covering all I have been saying, and the judge decided. Say, we could save a lot of money by not paying judges -- we could skip all that, and just ask you to read the current version of the plain text and stop there. I can't escape the feeling that you are deliberately not getting it. You are almost correct. A decision of the state's highest court is the law of the state, unless or until that same court reverses it or the USSC overturns it, in cases where there's a federal issue. But I guess I need to learn how courts work.