Lawyer Sues 20-Year-Old Student Who Gave a Bad Yelp Review, Loses Badly (arstechnica.com) 90
20-year-old Lan Cai was in a car crash this summer, after she was plowed into by a drunk driver and broke two bones in her lower back. She didn't know how to navigate her car insurance and prove damages, so she reached out for legal help. Things didn't go as one would have liked, initially, as ArsTechnica documents:The help she got, Cai said, was less than satisfactory. Lawyers from the Tuan A. Khuu law firm ignored her contacts, and at one point they came into her bedroom while Cai was sleeping in her underwear. "Seriously, it's super unprofessional!" she wrote on Facebook. (The firm maintains it was invited in by Cai's mother.) She also took to Yelp to warn others about her bad experience. The posts led to a threatening e-mail from Tuan Khuu attorney Keith Nguyen. Nguyen and his associates went ahead and filed that lawsuit, demanding the young woman pay up between $100,000 and $200,000 -- more than 100 times what she had in her bank account. Nguyen said he didn't feel bad at all about suing Cai. Cai didn't remove her review, though. Instead she fought back against the Khuu firm, all thanks to attorney Michael Fleming, who took her case pro bono. Fleming filed a motion arguing that, first and foremost, Cai's social media complaints were true. Second, she couldn't do much to damage the reputation of a firm that already had multiple poor reviews. He argued the lawsuit was a clear SLAPP (strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). Ultimately, the judge agreed with Fleming, ordering the Khuu firm to pay $26,831.55 in attorneys' fees.
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I'm more of a second post guy, by to each their own.
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Maybe refunding her the fees the first lawyers charged.
Re:Pro Bono? (Score:5, Informative)
"Loses Badly"??? (Score:2)
They were paid for their initial service.
Then then sued her for between $100k and $200k.
Her new lawyer did it pro bono.
End result, their firm had to pay $26.8k in attorneys' fees.
How the hell is that "Loses Badly"?!?!? IMO, that's nowhere near enough.
She's out with a broken back and medical fees that (I'm assuming) she didn't get back.
Her lawyer lost out on what he should have been able to get.
They're all out a ton of time and effort.
Their lawyers probably still got a paycheck, and their firm just had to co
Re:Pro Bono? (Score:4, Insightful)
If "filing documents and other case-related expenses", excluding lawyer's time costs $26,831.55 then I weep for the so called "justice" system.
Re: Pro Bono? (Score:3)
Re:Pro Bono? (Score:5, Informative)
This might just be the judge's way of punishing them for a frivolous lawsuit. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Re: Pro Bono? (Score:1)
Pro bono attorneys get awarded fees all the time. Just 'cause you ain't charging the client doesn't mean legal services have no value.
Put differently, let's say I find a client whom I decide has such a worthy case that I want to donate my services: pro bono. Through judgment, the representation costs me -- in time I'm donating for free, but that I would otherwise devote to paying clients -- $100k. That's real value, and real cost -- only born by the lawyer, not the client. Say, then, the judge decides that
Only 2 reviews on Yelp (Score:2)
I wonder if they guy linking to the Ars report will get sued now...
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Cai is a Chinese surname... although Nguyen is definitely Vietnamese.
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I was going to joke about Nguyen being as common as Smith, but according to wikipedia as much as 40% of the population have the surname.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It is also very common in some areas of America. My daughter attended high school in San Jose, California, and about 20% of her graduating class were named Nguyen. They take up 12 pages in her yearbook. If so many people have the same surname, then it sort of defeats the whole purpose of having surnames in the first place, which was to disambiguate duplicate given names.
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It's kind of freaky to look at the top ten Vietnamese surnames as a percentage of total population.
Nguyen: 39%
+Tran: 50%
+Le: 60%
+Pham: 67%
+Huynh: 72%
+Phan: 77%
+Vu: 81%
+Dang: 83%
+Bui: 85%
+Do: 86%
Re:Fly-by-Night JD Degree (Score:5, Informative)
There hasn't been an ACORN since 2010. You may not have seen that on your favorite fake news site.
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ACORN has successor organizations. New names, same M.O.. Smaller groups, harder to identify, harder to sue, harder and less effective for law enforcement to track down and shut down. Also more difficult to generate concentrated bad publicity. It's much like the blooming of communist front groups in the mid 20th century.
You make them sound like organized crime the police would actually give two shits about shutting down.
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That sounds like the typical law school in the United States.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/law-school-accreditors-raising-the-bar-1479751011 [wsj.com]
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Probably graduates from some San Francisco Law "School" and Noodle Shop. Pass the Bar with the minimum requisite score and set up an ambulance chasing practice that specializes in targeting minorities.
California has one of the harder bar exams in the US to pass. If they could pass the bar in California, then they have to know some law, at least.
Pro Bono (Score:2, Funny)
Sonny Bono was the best at everything (except skiing, that is)
Babe, I got you babe.
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***SPLAT!***
Original Article Date (Score:1)
The original article that Ars sourced was posted July 27, 2016.
Well done, Ars, well done.
Re:Original Article Date (Score:4, Informative)
The original article that Ars sourced was posted July 27, 2016.
That article was from when the lawsuit began. This story is about the end of it all after the judge made a decision on the case. The date of the judgement in the PDF from the article [arstechnica.com] was dated November 21.
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No, he wanted pics of the lawyers, not the client...
Non-zero sum (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Non-zero sum (Score:5, Insightful)
They were certainly hoping that the client will negociate "no lawsuit, but I'll remove my review"
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She was a client that couldn't navigate her car insurance; what were the odds that she could find a way of actually going to court and winning instead of just calling them up in tears, promising to take down her review if they'd just leave her alone?
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Plus the fact that when she went looking for a law firm before she found them. They probably weren't counting on her finding a competent lawyer this time around.
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Considering the fact that there are no other Yelp reviews other than hers, I think that they have been pretty successful. Either that or nobody actually uses this law firm and/or Yelp...
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If they had won their case, then they would probably have gotten various protective sealing orders and other tactics to keep details of the case from seeing the light of day.
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Re:Non-zero sum (Score:5, Insightful)
They were not intending to go through with the suit and were using the threat of having a $200,000 judgment against here as a way to pressure her into removing her review. They were hoping she would cower and hide away, not bitch SLAAP them for $26K with the help of an actual honest lawyer.
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Do you know how they catch monkeys by putting banana in a cage? We are only apes they say.
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toss em all into a piranha tank.
Surely there are cheaper ways of feeding lawyers.
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So, you support a lawyer's office filing a libel suit over things that are demonstratably true?
No, you aren't a lawyer.
Let's do it! (Score:2)
I have been drinking and decided to shed some kharma. Yeah!
loses badly??? (Score:5, Interesting)
That doesn't sound like loses badly. That just sounds like a relatively normal loss. A normal loss should probably include attorney fees. I'm glad the student won and didn't end up having to pay money but the student was probably still out a ton of time and hassle and it didn't sound like there was any compensation to the student or punishment to the firm besides having to pay the other side's court cost. Again, glad the student fought it but the only thing the student got to show for it was to be able to keep their review online. The student should be rewarded somehow for fighting a frivolous lawsuit instead of taking the easy route and just deleting the review.
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You mean like the $26k award of fees specifically mentioned in the summary?
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"Attorney's fees" ... not a dime will go to her.
She should have been paid at least prevailing wages for time spent on the case.
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That doesn't sound like loses badly. That just sounds like a relatively normal loss. A normal loss should probably include attorney fees. I'm glad the student won and didn't end up having to pay money but the student was probably still out a ton of time and hassle and it didn't sound like there was any compensation to the student or punishment to the firm besides having to pay the other side's court cost. Again, glad the student fought it but the only thing the student got to show for it was to be able to keep their review online. The student should be rewarded somehow for fighting a frivolous lawsuit instead of taking the easy route and just deleting the review.
Clearly you are forgetting:
- This will further darken the Law Firm's reputation. Yelp review or not.
- The Negative PR from this clusterfuck isn't going to draw in new clients.
- This isn't going to help them in the future. Especially if a high profile case comes up.
So they have lost money. That isn't a big deal. It is the attention and court of public opinion that will last forever and do more harm than they want.
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Well, in a sense they could be described as Klutzes...
Lawyers are a pretty douchy bunch (Score:4, Informative)
Bwahahaha (Score:1)
Pro Bono (Score:2)
FML, I'd like to "work for free" and only get paid $27k for a few hours/days work.
Not really Pro Bono is it.
What I still don't understand is ... (Score:2)
She was in a collision ; OK, fine.
She submits a claim for the damage to the vehicle and herself. Fine.
The insurance company will ask for supporting documentation - police crime reference (since a drunk driver was mentioned, which is a crime in most countries I've head of ; the crash and injury may or may not be a separate crime ; also "dangerous driving", "driving without insurance", "taking and driving away" ; whatever else in
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