Did a Vietnamese-American Texas attorney commit fraud when she signed up 1,000 Vietnamese fishermen in return for 60% contingency fees? Smells like fraud.
Roughly half of the 40,000 fishermen in the Gulf are Vietnamese refugees. Recently, one Vietnamese-American female attorney from a Texas law firm signed up over 1,000 of the refugees in exchange for 60% contingency fees. What explanation of the intricacies of the American legal system was individually given by that attorney to those 1,000 persons? What do you think that Vietnamese female attorney said? Probably something like, get a little now rather than wait a long time like in the Valdez spill?
“Before it became the single biggest environmental catastrophe in American history, BP’s Deepwater Horizon was a magnet for barracudas, which endlessly circled the oil rig in the Gulf’s warm waters, feeding on smaller fish. The oil plume and massive cleanup have driven away many of the underwater predators. But as a group of Vietnamese-American lawyers discovered before returning to the Bay Area from the Gulf of Mexico last week, the barracudas have come ashore.
“And they were carrying briefcases.
“About half the Gulf’s fishermen are Vietnamese-Americans — as many as 20,000 in all — and many of them have signed retainer agreements with attorneys who promised to help sort out BP’s complicated claims process, and represent them in any eventual lawsuits against the oil company. But because there is almost no cadre of Vietnamese-speaking professionals in southern Louisiana or Mississippi, the fishermen were easy prey for lawyers who see BP’s $20 billion escrow fund as a cash cow.
“Idled for months, the fishermen were unsure which way to turn. Those who agreed to sign waivers in exchange for compensation now would forfeit their right to sue BP. But lawsuits filed after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska took decades to unwind, and in many cases resulted in relatively small payments. Without legal advocates, they had no way of knowing whether BP’s Vessels of Opportunity program — putting fishermen to work on the cleanup — was being implemented fairly.
Summoned to the Gulf Coast by the Mississippi Center for Justice to provide free legal counsel to Vietnamese fishing families, half a dozen members of the nonprofit Vietnamese American Bar Association of Northern California arrived in New Orleans expecting to be greeted warmly. But other attorneys — armed with contracts calling for contingency fees as high as 60 percent — had beaten them there, and left behind an almost impenetrable slick of hard feelings.
Lots of fear
When the pro bono lawyers conducted a town-hall meeting at the Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, few fishermen showed up, and most of those that came sat in the back with their arms folded, just staring.
“We figured because we look like them and talk like them, they would accept the services we had to offer,” said Mai Phan, a San Jose immigration lawyer who grew up in New Orleans. “But when we got there, it was the complete opposite of what we expected. They were afraid of us.”
Afraid, and angry. “I’ve never seen a group have such a look of hatred in their eyes for attorneys,” said Ann Nguyen, an Oakland-based bankruptcy lawyer, who is VABANC’s vice president.
Two months into the mammoth spill, fishermen along the Gulf Coast have already missed one of the most promising shrimping seasons in years, and estimates of how long it could take for them to get their lines and nets back into the water range from two to five years. The Exxon Valdez oil spill left Alaska’s fishermen tied up in court for three decades.
The Gulf Coast is home to the largest Vietnamese-American population outside California, and yet, the lawyers who went from here to there discovered the two communities have little in common. Some were surprised by how little the fishermen had assimilated into American life. “They’re very different from the Vietnamese in our area,” Phan said. “Since they came to this country, all they knew is how to fish.”
“These people came from Vietnam as refugees, went straight there, and they’ve been stuck there in kind of a time warp,” said Nguyen. “There’s a huge lack of Vietnamese professionals down there.”
The entire fishing industry is imperiled, but immigrant fishermen — who essentially transplanted their way of life from Vietnam to the Gulf Coast — could be in double trouble. If their livelihood disappears, they could become refugees again, this time fleeing economic hardship rather than war.
Nguyen’s father was a fisherman on the Gulf when she was growing up, and Phan’s parents lost their home during Hurricane Katrina. “This is really emotional,” Phan said. “It’s only been five years since Katrina, and they were barely rebuilding their lives when this hit. Fishing was all these people knew, and now they’re really struggling.”
As the Bay Area lawyers’ three days in the Gulf went on, word began to spread that they weren’t trying to profit at the locals’ expense, and the number of fishermen seeking their help increased. When they returned home last Monday, both Nguyen and Phan said they cried — partly because of all the work left undone.
They’re working with the White House and Rep. Anh Cao, R-La., on a white paper covering many of the legal issues they encountered there. Phan said they are also raising funds to create a fellowship for a Vietnamese-language attorney or law student to work with the Gulf fishermen full time.
Shortly before she returned to San Jose, Phan encountered one of the attorneys whose name she had seen on many of the contracts requiring huge contingency fees. She represented a firm from Texas, and she was Vietnamese-American.
Basically, the Texas lawyer told Phan, “If you’re here to get clients, it’s too late. I’ve already retained over a thousand of them here. You’re on my turf.'”
When one of the pro bono lawyers told her she must have an enormous staff to zealously represent so many of her own people, the barracuda silently swam away.Contact Bruce Newman at 408-920-5004.
