Houston Law Firm Sues Student With Severe Back Injuries For $200k After She Posts Negative Reviews To Yelp, Facebook
from the lead-attorney-pours-gasoline-on-own-head,-lights-match,-hurls-self-into-nearest dept
A Houston law firm has decided to make its mark on the world much in the same way a rogue house pet makes its mark on an expensive Oriental rug. The Tuan A. Khuu law firm has decided it has "no choice" but to sue a 20-year-old student suffering from two broken bones in her back following a collision with two vehicles -- one of them being the drunk driver who started the chain reaction.
The student (Lan Cai) first met representatives from the Khuu law office in her own bedroom, while still in her underwear.
Cai had never been in a major accident before, and she needed help from the attorneys while navigating insurance and proving her entitlement to damages. But when the attorneys came to her home, entered her bedroom (the attorneys maintain Cai's mother told them to go in) and then ignored her phone calls and emails in the days immediately after Cai signed the contract, she felt like hiring them was a mistake.
The hiring was a mistake. The firing was apparently also a mistake, especially after Cai headed to her Facebook page and Yelp to express her displeasure with Khuu. These negative reviews resulted in multiple calls and emails from the firm threatening legal action if she did not remove the "dispariging (sic)" review. The firm would have "no choice" but to do this, despite really having no legal or rational reason to do so.
Here's the entirety of the "dispariging" review the firm calls defamatory.
After 3 days, they didn't tell me anything about the doctor I needed to go to. I was in a lot of pain. Not only that, they didn't know where the hell my car was! And they came to my house and into my room to talk to me when I was sleeping in my underwear. Seriously, it's super unprofessional! ...I came in to the office to meet with my previous attorney, but he literally ran off.
Khuu attorney Keith Nguyen is the frontmouth for the firm and appears to regret nothing about suing a 20-year-old waitress who's trying to put herself through school. He claims Cai's review left out certain details and skewed others.
For example, when Cai says that her lawyer “literally ran off” when she showed up unannounced, Nguyen concedes he was on his way out the door, but took a moment to explain to her why there were liens on her insurance. The lawyers who went into her room had no idea she was in her underwear and say they were invited in, Nguyen explained. “It puts us in a bad light,” Nguyen said. “I said [to her], You can say that, but you need to add that we were invited. And she never did. She went ahead and wrote more bad things.”
It takes more than a difference in perspective to turn "bad things" into actionable defamatory statements. Nguyen is an attorney and presumably should know this. Nguyen also, presumably, is an inhabitant of this planet and partakes of the internet, so he should know what sort of effect is triggered by baseless legal bullying.
And, as part of the Khuu firm, he should also be aware that Cai isn't an anomaly. Even before the internet backlash kicked in the door of the firm's Yelp page (which now sports a warning from Yelp that it will remove positive/negative reviews that appear to be solely motivated by media coverage of the ongoing debacle), the law office wasn't exactly known for its stellar customer service. Meagan Flynn of the Houston Press points out that the Khuu law offices' Yelp pages are littered with negative reviews.
[G]ood reviews are hard to find, no matter which of the law firm's three locations you search. A guy named Han in Richardson, Texas, wrote, “Duped and filthy legal services. They trap you in their plan and dupe you out for their own goods. Stay away to protect yourself and your family.” A guy named Kevin from Austin: “They like to delay responses and make excuses for not returning calls. Incompetent and unreliable are the words I would use to describe their staff.” Charlie from Houston: “I went in for a 'free consultation' and it became a decision I would soon regret.”
In addition to the inevitable Streisanding, the Khuu law firm has also jabbed a stick into a hornet's nest of lawyers with low tolerance for bullying bullshit. So far, the law office's decision to sue a student for $200,000 has already attracted offers of assistance from Popehat's Ken White, First Amendment Badass (Texas Div.) Mark W. Bennett, and Scott Greenfield, whose undying curmudgeonliness (and undying AOL email address) are perfectly complemented by the number of fucks he gives about jabbing back at stupid attorneys. If this is just the initial response to the Khuu office legal threats, it's time to invest heavily in popcorn futures.
The immediate good news is that Lan Cai is now represented, pro bono, by Houston attorney Michael Fleming. Fleming hopes to flip this bogus lawsuit back on the Khuu law firm by using Texas' anti-SLAPP law -- the Texas Citizens Participation Act -- and extract $50,000 from the firm for the trouble it's caused. He also points out that the firm's reputation was pretty much an open sewage line well before Cai expressed her opinion, so it's unlikely the office can prove yet another negative review caused any actual damage to the firm itself.
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Filed Under: anti-slapp, free speech, lan cai, reviews, texas, tuan a khuu
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...which kind of makes me wonder, why did she go with them in the first place? If I needed representation, I'd do some research, and I'd talk with a friend of mine who's an attorney (who doesn't necessarily specialize in the area I need representation in, but probably knows a bunch of people that do) in order to find someone who'd be likely to do a good job.
When the concept of lawyers being sleazy by default is such a pervasive part of our culture that we have an entire genre of humor dedicated to it with its own Wikipedia page, even, it seems to me that hiring one without doing any due diligence is essentially akin to walking down a dark alley at night. You may or may not end up having a really bad experience, and if you do, the culpability lies squarely on the person(s) who victimized you, but even so... you really should have known better than to do that in the first place!
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In such a case, I would most likely call up my attorney friend and ask him, "if you needed a personal injury lawyer right now, who would you call? Because I need one. Right now." He's a decent enough guy that I'm reasonably confident this would get good results.
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You are assuming clear thinking, which for many people is very difficult in the aftermath of an accident, especially ion that results in injury. Also, not everyone has people with the relevant experience to call on, and family members, especially parents or children can be badly upset by your accident and not reliable sources of advice.
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Not particularly. I just happen to go to church with someone who's an attorney, and both have positions in the congregation where we end up working together a lot.
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The point is that by having a friend who is qualified and trustworthy to make such advice places you in a place of privilege over a 20 year old student who has no such friend.
Judging her from that position is disingenuous, to say nothing of the inevitable shock, pain and vulnerability resulting from the accident. You seem to be trying to blame the victim for making a bad choice, for no other reason than you would personally have better resources to call upon. Bravo. Not everyone's so lucky.
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This suggests a good premise of a Hitchcockian movie
Not saying that's what's going on in Lan Cai's case.
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People, often to their detriment, assume that being a member of the bar is some sort of reflection that they are good guys. (My long running most favorite lawyer anecdote - Lawyer in prison for murder for 8 years before the bar moved to disbar him.)
Guessing that being in extreme pain, most likely on pain killers, that doing a deep dive into people wasn't on the plate.
While consumers should check them out before signing, shouldn't those charged with providing oversight actually do that job?
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Add to that the aftershock of the accident, and no lawyer in the family or friend circle to ask advice from, and the mistake this young girl made is an easy one to make for anyone in her condition.
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A 20 year old student with major physical injuries probably isn't going to be someone who does careful research before contacting someone for legal advice. In fact, the article doesn't mention how they were contacted initially, so they may have been the ones to make the initial contact. Sleazy ambulance chasing, blame them rather than the victim.
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Pay per View
If only Pay per View would feature such things... I imagine they could make a fortune.
I also think two fortunes could be made if they could get certain politicians to also entertain us in the same fashion.
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The Call of Kthulhu?
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I would LOVE to see him take the case and the inevitable fun we'd have with the fillings :/
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Here is how it works
He drives around once a week to all the police departments in the area and gets a copy of every new accident report. At first the departments were so-so with him, but when they found out he was once one of them, they welcomed him and would have a copy of reports waiting.
He knows how cops write the reports, what to look for, how to spot if someone got hurt and the other person screwed up.
Those reports that pass first muster he sends on, and the firm sends out a standard letter to them. If they call back and want the firm to get money for them, he is the one sets up an appointment and takes a copy of the standard agreement to them to sign.
At that point it is up to the lawyers at the firm to follow up.
No bullies, at least with his firm. They might send a second letter a few weeks later if they get no response. Also no need to bully, if it is a bad case to start with, that is, the facts in the police report show it is going to be hard to prove fault, he doesn't forward those cases.
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If the attorney is sufficiently circumspect and otherwise professional, they can get away with it indefinitely. It sounds like the firm in question is neither.
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In de haus
E
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But if you want to fix your reputation by suing all your many critics you have to start somewhere.
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Watch them implode ala Prenda.
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Which department is that?
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Extreme pain makes it hard to think clearly, what's the lawyers excuse?
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their site
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Yeah Baby!
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Re: Yeah Baby!
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A three letter answer: IRS
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Knowing lawyers
Look into it *before* you get into a bad situation. (Saved me some big bucks with a rental car issue, when my free consult told me I had the evidence on my side and shouldn't even need a lawyer if the company pursued me - but they were available if I did.)
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How to find a lawyer
Has anonymously sourced peer review & client ratings
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That' Exactly why you must consult an expert
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