Securing competent legal representation is always a good idea when one is going to court. But it’s especially smart to have a lawyer if one is being sued by the government.

That’s one of the lessons that presents itself following an afternoon of cases heard in Suffolk General District Court last week. Two similar cases involving damages the Virginia Department of Transportation claimed were caused by drivers more than 10 years ago ended in very different verdicts.

The defendant in the first suit — brought by VDOT 15 years after the accident the agency claims caused $2,806.50 worth of damage to a guardrail on Holland Road — had an attorney from the Virginia Legal Aid Society representing him in court and walked away with his case having been dismissed. Another plaintiff in court the same day had to pay $342 for damages to a guardrail on I-664 that VDOT said occurred in 2003, when that defendant slid into the rail after hitting black ice.

The second defendant had no lawyer representing him to make some of the obvious and necessary arguments that had helped the first defendant walk away from court without writing a check to the state.

What’s the evidence the guardrails weren’t already damaged? Why did the commonwealth wait so long to follow up on the bills it claimed to have sent immediately following the accidents? Why hadn’t VDOT provided an itemized breakdown of the costs?

One defendant had a lawyer to ask those and other such questions, and he won his case. The other relied solely on his own testimony and lost. Clearly lawyers can make a difference.

So can the General Assembly, which set a five-year statute of limitations on seeking reimbursement for expenses to repair state property in 2014. Unfortunately, legislators failed to make that statute retroactive, meaning that Virginia can attempt to collect in such cases, no matter how old they are. So that stop sign you hit in 1978 still could come back to haunt you today.

Legislators need to fix this loophole, as defendants in such cases find themselves at a great and unfair disadvantage to the commonwealth.

Most folks would surely be glad to have an attorney argue their case into a dismissal, but most of them also would likely prefer that justice not hang on the cleverest argument.