Toyota Defect Lawsuit led Attorney to help Man behind Bars

December 7th, 2010. By BrendaC

LawyersandSettlements.com has a new column that looks at a side of lawyers you don’t hear too much about—the side that gives back…pays it forward..and shares the love. We’ve found quite a number of attorneys who log non-billable hours helping others—simply because they believe it’s the right thing to do. Their stories are inspiring, and hey, who knew lawyers were so…good? If you’ve got a story to share about an attorney who’s doing the right thing, let us know—we’d love to let others know, too. Today, we talk with Attorney Robert Hilliard of Hilliard, Munoz & Gonzales…

Attorney Robert Hilliard: “…I started to understand what had happened, I asked ‘what about the guy in jail?'”

Texas attorney Robert Hilliard went to Minnesota to sue Toyota in a products liability case but ended up fighting to free a man wrongfully convicted of vehicular homicide. It was a strange turn of events, but as Hilliard explains he believed it was something he just had to do.

“When I got to Minneapolis and I started to understand what had happened, I asked ‘what about the guy in jail?’”, says Hilliard.

The man in jail was Koua Fong Lee, a 38-year-old immigrant from Thailand who had been sent to prison after his Toyota Camry slammed into an Oldsmobile at 90 miles an hour and killed three people in 2006. From the beginning Fong had insisted his foot was not on the accelerator, but no one believed him.

Then last January, after Lee had spent more than two years in prison, it was revealed that Toyota was indeed having problems with the accelerator system in some of its vehicles.

Although Hilliard was there to sue Toyota on behalf of a family whose loved ones had been killed in the accident, he began to believe it was Koua Fong Lee who needed the help of a top lawyer.

Hilliard quickly arranged a meeting with the young criminal attorney who was representing Lee. A new trial had been ordered because of the Toyota revelations.

As Hilliard says, he isn’t a criminal lawyer. However he has an established and very successful civil practice in Corpus Christi. He offered to bring the full weight of the firm, experts, money, time, staff—to defend Lee. Hilliard would foot the bill for everything and anything. His services would all be pro bono.

“Of course, I ended up not being able to continue my representation of the other family,” says Hilliard.

Hilliard went to meet Lee where he was being held in prison. “He walked out and sat down at the table. I saw what a powerfully quiet fellow he was and how sincere he was.”

Part way through the trial, the prosecution offered to free Lee immediately if he would plead guilty. Lee refused. He’d take his chances rather than admit to a crime he did not commit.

On the last day of the trial, as the judge began to read her opinion, Hilliard knew Lee would be released. “It was a very poignant moment,” recalls Hilliard. “I had my hand on his arm and once I got the sense of where she was going I wrote Koua a note that said ‘you are free, you are free’.”

“It is not like I woke up one morning and thought I have to find someone to help,” says Hilliard. “I mean, I have been a criminal lawyer for all of four days in my whole career. But I thought the right thing to do was to help this guy get out of jail.” 

Robert Hilliard is a personal injury lawyer from the firm of Hilliard, Munoz & Gonzales. He was recently honored for his work on the Lee case by the Innocence Project of Minnesota and was a recipient of the organization’s “Never Forgotten Award”. Among other things, Hilliard is representing a large commercial fishing company in its fight against BP in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation.

Tags: Lawyers Giving Back

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