The Pusch & Nguyen Law Firm, known for its ubiqiotous billboards, appears to be no more.
Brittanie Shey
New text messages revealed last month are roiling the trial between Houston injury lawyers Anthony Pusch and Chi-Hung David Nguyen. The texts appear to show Nguyen disparaging Pusch, his former partner, and arranging to receive a loan from a former Pusch & Nguyen client to finance offices for Nguyen’s competing law firm. The revelations come as Nguyen’s previous legal representation after from the case.
The ongoing court battle began last spring, when Pusch sued Nguyen for allegedly breaking a 2024 memorandum of understanding that ended a previous suit. Pusch said Nguyen was set on creating his own law firm that would compete directly with Pusch & Nguyen, and that Nguyen intended to take firm trademarks for himself. Pusch has since expelled Nguyen from the firm and replaced him with Bob Wynne, another Houston attorney whom Pusch has said he knew from law school.
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In filings submitted in Harris County District Court on Tuesday, attorneys for Pusch uploaded pages of text messages that they called “damning.” The messages between Nguyen, his brother and a former client of the Pusch & Nguyen law firm allegedly prove Nguyen was attempting to take Pusch & Nguyen assets to form his own competing law firm.
On Feb. 16, 2025, Nguyen told an unnamed party that dealing with Pusch was “so taxing” on Nguyen. When the unnamed party said they thought Pusch and Nguyen’s partnership had already ended, Nguyen replied with his thoughts on his partner.
“He’s just a pos. I don’t want to be around him,” Nguyen said. “I’m prob gonna tell him to buy me out. Gtf away from him and focus on my ai tech company. The law firm has peaked and will never get past the current stage because he is too dumb.”
A former client and a secret loan
Text messages sent between summer 2023 and February 2025 detail plans that Nguyen and his brother made to purchase a piece of property off of the Gulf Freeway across the street from the Pusch & Nguyen offices. They also show that the pair apparently went to great lengths to keep the transaction from Pusch.
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Per a supplemental brief submitted by Pusch’s attorneys, Nguyen and his two brothers, John and Phillip, “covertly obtained” funding to buy the new office from Chassity Murray, a former client of the Pusch & Nguyen law firm. In Pusch’s telling, that runs counter to previous testimony from Nguyen and John in which they said investment money from their family was used to buy the property. John Nguyen, according to court documents, testified on June 24, 2025 that David bought the new offices “outright with investments from family members.”
Harris County court records show that the Pusch & Nguyen law firm represented Murray in a 2021 lawsuit against a New Jersey-based trucking company. Many of the details of the suit have been sealed, but Murray’s suit was dismissed with prejudice in November 2023.
Messages show the Nguyens texting Murray about setting up an LLC to loan them the money to buy the property. Why the Nguyens chose Murray is unclear, but the texts show that the Nguyens went to great lengths to keep Murray’s identity and the transaction from Pusch. At one point, after the loan deal was finalized, David Nguyen told his brother to “delete [any trace of the transaction] off of vinesign,” an electronic signature platform. During a conversation in June at the Pusch & Nguyen office, John asked about Murray. When David did not respond, John asked if David’s office was “bugged.”
“Wtf man,” David Nguyen replied. “Why would you mention that name around him… We can hear crap in each others’ rooms.”
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John assured David he would not mention Murray’s name in Pusch’s presence and asked to set up a call with Murray.
“Does she know this is not something to mention to Anthiny [sic],” John asked David.
After the transaction was closed, David Nguyen and John discussed banking options for the loan. They discussed which bank might scrutinize the transaction the least, and David Nguyen did not want to use Frost Bank.
“I just don’t want Frost people knowing she loaned me the money,” David said.
The Nguyens in previous testimony said the property would house either an AI legal technology services company or a workspace for young lawyers. Yet the texts show the pair discussing where they would bring prospective legal clients. Pusch says that this, as well as other exhibits about the split between Pusch & Nguyen and a discussion of rebranding software designed for Pusch & Nguyen, is proof that the Nguyens lied to the court.
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A question of ownership
In their responses to the new texts, Nguyen and his lawyers asked that Judge Christine Weems declare that the texts are inadmissible in court.
“Plaintiffs have obtained copies of Nguyen’s confidential and privileged communications without his consent or authorization,” Nguyen’s lawyers wrote Tuesday night. In a separate declaration, Nguyen said that because many of the texts viewed by Pusch’s legal team through discovery included messages between Nguyen and his attorney, Joe Little, entering the texts into the public record was a breach of privacy.
But at an emergency hearing on April 8, Pusch’s attorney, Rodney Drinnon, produced purchase records from the law firm which showed that Nguyen purchased his Mac Studio computer with the Pusch & Nguyen Amex card. In both an email to Nguyen’s former attorney and on Wednesday, Drinnon cited a chapter from the Pusch & Nguyen company handbook stipulating that the computer was company property, not Nguyen’s, because it was purchased with the firm card. Drinnon said the text messages had been backed up to Nguyen’s company issued computer via iCloud, which is how the messags were obtained.
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“Once again, he is lying to you,” Drinnon told the court on Wednesday.
Drinnon declined to comment for this story. At Wednesday’s hearing, Nguyen was represented by attorney Land Murphy. Murphy did not respond to a request for comment. Nguyen’s previous lawyers, Matthew Whitley and attorneys at the firm Beck Redden, withdrew from the case last month. No reason was given, and neither Whitely nor Beck Redden responded to a request for comment.
Weems, on Wednesday, said she had not had time to read through several of the new filings but said she was “concerned about the allegations on both sides.”
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Weems set a hearing for next Wednesday morning.