{"id":194049,"date":"2026-06-19T05:30:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T13:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=194049"},"modified":"2026-06-19T05:58:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T13:58:41","slug":"lat-ford-sues-l-a-lemon-law-firm-alleging-utter-fabrications-inflated-fees-by-7000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=194049","title":{"rendered":"LAT: Ford sues L.A. lemon law firm alleging \u2018utter fabrications\u2019 inflated fees by 7,000%"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rebecca Ellis writes for The Los Angeles Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nFord Motor Co. is suing a prominent Los Angeles lemon law firm for allegedly inflating their fees by as much as 7,000%, the company\u2019s latest attempt to crack down on California attorneys who it says are exploiting the state\u2019s unique law to protect consumers from defective cars.<\/p>\n

Quill & Arrow, a personal injury firm that represents drivers suing over so-called \u201clemons\u201d \u2014 vehicles with significant, unfixable manufacturing flaws \u2014 has long been a thorn in the side of Ford. Since 2021, Ford said its has paid them more than $100 million, roughly half in attorney fees.<\/p>\n

That profit, Ford alleges in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday, came from billing records that were \u201cutter fabrications.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quill & Arrow used an overseas \u201carmy\u201d of low-paid, non-lawyers to help file thousands of lemon lawsuits and then pretended the work was done by California attorneys, who billed as much as $950 per hour, Ford alleged in its complaint.<\/p>\n

Ford claims that the bulk of the work was actually done by non-lawyers in countries such as Mexico and the Philippines, who got paid as little as $13 per hour.<\/p>\n

Quill & Arrow was founded in 2019 by attorneys Kevin Jacobson and Jonathan Shirian, according to the firm\u2019s website, which touts recovering $500 million in lemon law payouts. The partners called Ford\u2019s lawsuit \u201cnothing more than an attempt to silence firms who would dare to hold them responsible and seek justice for consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n

…California\u2019s lemon law, considered one of the strongest consumer protections in the nation, allows drivers to get a refund or replacement of a broken car if the manufacturer can\u2019t fix it. If the driver is not satisfied, they can sue.<\/p>\n

If the driver wins, the law allows attorneys to collect their fees from the car maker \u2014 rather than take a percentage of the client\u2019s winnings, as is common in personal injury cases. This fee structure, Ford argues, has turned the law into a bonanza for plaintiff attorneys. The longer the case drags on, the company argues, the more the law firm can reap in profit.<\/p>\n

Ford alleges the firm intentionally slowed down its clients\u2019 cases to drive up their billable hours, instructing drivers not to communicate with Ford and pushing them toward filing a lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia\u2019s Lemon Laws are in need of reform and the courts need to exercise more oversight, given the fraud we continue to expose,\u201d said Doug Lampe, counsel at Ford, in a statement. The law is \u201cbeing blatantly abused by the lemon law plaintiffs lawyers, the bar is not policing its own and the courts need to monitor fee awards with far more skepticism and scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cases, he said, \u201chave become about the lawyers for the lawyers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lemon law cases have exploded in California in the last decade from about 4,500 cases in 2015 to roughly 30,000 in 2024, according to an analysis from the Assembly Judiciary. These cases, officials warned, \u201care poised to cripple the entirety of California\u2019s civil justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n

…A partner at Knight Law Group, an L.A.-based lemon law firm, once billed an \u201costensibly heroic but physically impossible\u201d 57.5-hour workday, Ford alleged.<\/p>\n

…A judge threw out the suit [against Knight Law Group] in March on the grounds that lawyers were protected under the First Amendment from being sued for the content of their lawsuits unless the case was proven fraudulent. Ford says it plans to appeal.<\/p>\n

After Quill found about the Knight Law Group case, Ford alleged, Quill dedicated a team to \u201cscrubbing\u201d their own timesheets of \u201cimpossible time entries.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Los Angeles Times reported May 21, 2025<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Ford Motor Co. has filed suit against multiple prominent Southern California law firms and attorneys, alleging that they engaged in a vast and sophisticated fraud scheme to collect at least $100 million in \u201cphantom legal fees\u201d under the state\u2019s Lemon Law.<\/p>\n

In a complaint filed early Wednesday in Los Angeles federal court, the Dearborn, Mich.-based car manufacturer claimed the lawyers violated the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act by working together to carry out the alleged fraud for years.<\/p>\n

Describing the invoices it received from California lawyers as a \u201cmagical mystery tour of fictitious billings,\u201d Ford claimed that attorneys named in the lawsuit took advantage of a statute designed to protect consumers from faulty products, including cars…<\/p>\n

The complaint alleged that Steve B. Mikhov was the \u201cringleader of the criminal enterprise\u201d and that he and Knight Law Group, the Los Angeles-based firm where he was a founding partner, \u201corchestrated\u201d the scheme.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas passed tort reform in their 2025 sessions aimed at neutralizing nuclear verdicts, and Florida and others moved on premises liability, bad faith law, and transparency around third-party litigation funding. Georgia acted after a $1.7 billion verdict in Hill v. Ford Motor Co. and a $2.5 billion verdict in Brogdon v. Ford Motor Co. Most of that sits in red states with business-friendly legislatures.
\nCalifornia is the outlier, and that explains why the Ford suits take the shape they do. The legislature only tightened the lemon law a little in 2024, and the caseload climbed anyway. Manufacturers can’t win in Sacramento, so they fight in court. The Ford play is not legislative reform at all. It’s a defendant suing the plaintiff firms directly, under RICO and fraud theories. A different weapon.
\nAnd it keeps failing. A court threw out the May 2025 RICO suit against Knight Law Group, on the holding that lawyers are shielded from suit over the content of their filings unless those filings are proven fraudulent. Read the Quill & Arrow complaint against that backdrop. The overseas-non-lawyer angle is built to clear that bar. “You billed $950 an hour for work done by someone in Manila paid $13” is a fraud and unauthorized-practice claim, not a gripe about hours. It’s engineered to survive the First Amendment problem that sank the first suit.
\nThe lemon law issue is fee-shifting, not runaway juries. Under the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act, the manufacturer pays the winning plaintiff’s legal fees and costs. So the incentive runs toward dragging a case out, not toward a giant award.
\nFee-shifting exists because a single driver can’t outspend Ford. Strip it out and the statute dies as a deterrent. The firms’ line about Ford trying to silence consumer advocates is self-serving, and it isn’t empty. The reform question is how to police padded timesheets without gutting the thing that lets ordinary buyers sue at all. Ford’s people frame it as a bar that won’t police itself. The firms frame it as a manufacturer making consumer litigation too costly to bring. Both can be true at once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rebecca Ellis writes for The Los Angeles Times: Ford Motor Co. is suing a prominent Los Angeles lemon law firm for allegedly inflating their fees by as much as 7,000%, the company\u2019s latest attempt to crack down on California attorneys … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-los-angeles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t