by Katherine Nguyen
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Three Santa Ana women on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Garden Grove Councilman Van Thai Tran, accusing him of botching their 1999 wrongful-termination suit after they hired him as their attorney.
Two sisters, Vinh and Hien Tran, and friend My Linh Nguyen allege that they paid Van Thai Tran an $8,000 retainer fee to file a wrongful-termination and discrimination lawsuit against Oakley Corp. but that he failed to file the lawsuit within the legal time limit.
The women worked on the assembly line at Oakley and are now suing Tran for an undisclosed amount of damages the say they would have gotten if he had filed on their behalf.
Tran, who's running for the 68th Assembly seat, said the lawsuit is clearly a political smear campaign.
"I did nothing wrong and it's sad that this gets aired out for the media and public," Tran said Wednesday. "I think it's suspicious that this (lawsuit) comes just five months before an election that I'm a frontrunner in."
Tran said he told the women he felt they had no case and offered to return their money twice, but the women refused.
The women's attorney, Thinh Van Doan, tells a different story. "He told them that they had a case and that they would be in court soon and everything would be OK," Doan said. "He took their money and didn't do anything for the case."
Tran said he's ready to defend himself. "I didn't do anything wrong, and I'm confident I'll prevail."
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