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 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<\/a> and Jonathan Shirian<\/a>, 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 \u201cIt grossly mischaracterizes the facts and the claim that Quill & Arrow created fabricated attorney billing records is absurd,\u201d the firm said in a statement. <\/p>\n California\u2019s lemon law<\/a>, 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<\/a> from the Assembly Judiciary. These cases, officials warned, \u201care poised to cripple the entirety of California\u2019s civil justice system.\u201d <\/p>\n In 2024, the legislature tightened the state\u2019s lemon law,<\/a> requiring additional steps before a driver could sue. The bill seems to have put little dent in the caseload: Lemon lawsuits surged<\/a> to record levels the following year.<\/p>\n Ford\u2019s lawsuit marks the second attempt by one of America\u2019s largest car manufacturers to go on the offense against lemon law attorneys in Southern California.<\/p>\n Ford sued<\/a> a cohort of local lemon law firms in May 2025, accusing attorneys of collecting at least $100 million in \u201cphantom legal fees\u201d by billing for hours they never worked. The case, which was brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, alleged lawyers worked together to file a flurry of fraudulent cases with billable hours that defied logic.<\/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 Knight Law Group denied inflating their billing, calling the suit a \u201cthinly veiled attempt to silence firms who would dare to hold them responsible and seek justice for consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n A judge threw out the suit in March<\/a> 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<\/a>. Ford says it plans to appeal.<\/p>\n After Quill found about about the Knight Law Group case, Ford alleged, Quill dedicated a team to \u201cscrubbing\u201d their own timesheets of \u201cimpossible time entries.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ford Motor Co. is suing a prominent Los Angeles lemon law firm for allegedly inflating their fees by…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":876973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[323382,75551,1582,276,356399,6517,6123,17239,12853,9649,3043,356403,356401,2961,12846,356400,224,5337,349610,356402],"class_list":["post-876972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-arrow","tag-attorney-fee","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-california-attorney","tag-case","tag-driver","tag-federal-lawsuit","tag-fee","tag-ford","tag-hour","tag-knight-law-group","tag-l-a-lemon-law-firm","tag-la","tag-lawyer","tag-lemon-law-payout","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-quill","tag-unique-law"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116773769424992254","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=876972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}