Early one morning on her way home from work, 20-year-old Lan Cai was struck by a drunk driver at about 1:30am. After the impact Cai was hit by a second car, which had been trying to avoid her after her first collision. The accidents left Cai severely battered and with two broken bones in her back.
Retaining an Attorney
Cai contacted Houston based Tuan A. Khuu law firm for help. A representative visited her at her home as she lay in bed recovering from her injuries. Cai signed the contract to retain the firm to represent her, but says that in the days after her meeting with the firm’s representative the firm failed to return her calls and emails.
Taking to Social Media
Feeling like she had been wrong to hire the Khuu, Cai took to social media to vent her frustrations and warn others about doing business with the firm. In a Vietnamese-American focused Facebook group she wrote that the firm’s attorneys had failed to locate her car, failed to tell her to go to see a doctor, and had even visited her in her home and entered her room while she was sleeping in her underwear. Her attorney at Khuu, Keith Nguyen, saw the post and informed Cai that if she did not remove it the firm would be forced to file suit against her.
Filing Suit
When Cai refused to remove the disparaging comments about the law firm she was hit with a lawsuit demanding between $100,000 and $200,000. The suit stated that Cai had made libelous accusations about the firm, saying that her statements were both false and highly damaging. For example, Nguyen insists that Cai’s mother told him to enter when he visited her at her home, and he did not know she was still in her underwear at the time. Though the law firm reportedly has many negative social media reviews, Nguyen says that it targeted Cai because her review was filled with “half-truths.”
Time Off to Battle for Closure
For her part Cai says that in writing the posts on Yelp and Facebook she was simply expressing her opinion. She has decided to take a semester off from school in order to try to deal with her injuries, the process of recovering damages after the accident, and the lawsuit resulting from her unfavorable social media reviews.
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