Lam Defense Lawyers Petition for Chapter 11

Chula and May Law Corp., the Santa Ana law firm that won an involuntary manslaughter verdict for a Vietnamese student who fatally shot Cal State Fullerton Prof. Edward Lee Cooperman, has filed for reorganization in federal bankruptcy court in Santa Ana.

Partner George H. Chula said the firm’s participation in the five-month case, which required two trials and ended when Lam received a three-year prison sentence last March, seriously depleted its finances and led to the filing of the petition to protect the business from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy laws.

Chula and his partner, Alan May, were hired by relatives of Fullerton student Minh Van Lam, who was convicted of shooting the physics professor in his campus office on Oct. 14, 1984. However, May said the firm received less than $1,000, and lost about $25,000 from its work on the case.

“I never expected it to have the ramifications it had,” May said. “It grew and grew and grew. But our first duty was to the client. Once you’re the attorney of record, it’s up to you to do the best job you can.”

Found Case Interesting

May and Chula said they took the case primarily because they found the facts and issues interesting. “About once a year we take a case where we think social justice requires (that a client) have excellent legal representation,” May said. “It’s essentially pro bono (public service)work.”

The Chapter 11 petition listed the firm’s assets at $875,000 and debts at $725,000. Chula said he and May filed the document Friday to halt the foreclosure sale of a 5,800-square-foot ranch house in Orange, which they had received as payment from another client.

May and Chula were refurbishing the house, which is the firm’s main asset, in hopes of selling it at a profit and paying off their debts.

However, because of financial disputes with their bank and the Internal Revenue Service, to which the firm owed back payroll taxes, the two attorneys were unable to continue making payments on the property.

“They were going to sell it (Friday) morning or else, so we had to file for bankruptcy,” said Chula, who once filed for personal bankruptcy in 1968.

The firm’s handling of the Lam case became controversial when May suggested early in the first trial--in which the prosecution sought conviction on first-degree murder charges--that Cooperman committed suicide and may have had a sexual interest in young Asian men.

May later changed tactics, theorizing that Cooperman was preoccupied with defending himself against an assassin and was practicing self-defense with Lam when the gun went off accidentally.

Friends and relatives of the professor, who ran a foundation that provided scientific and humanitarian aid to communist-controlled Vietnam, said they believed that Cooperman had been the victim of a political assassination, but prosecutors in the district attorney’s office never determined what motive Lam might have had for shooting Cooperman.