Regulation Companies
RICO billing conspiracy by legislation companies ‘hoodwinked’ courts, Ford alleges in go well with looking for $300M
A closeup of the Ford signal is seen exterior a Ford dealership retailer in Sunnyvale, California, in Might 2022. (Picture from Shutterstock)
Three California legislation companies are a part of a racketeering conspiracy that “ingeniously” inflated charge requests in lemon legislation litigation by spreading their fraudulent billing throughout 1000’s of circumstances towards many automotive makers, in response to a $300 million lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Ford Motor Co.
Payment claims in a number of circumstances reveal “a magical thriller tour of fictitious billings, together with particular person attorneys who supposedly labored greater than 24 hours per day or concurrently attended completely different trials or depositions in geographically distant jurisdictions,” in response to the Might 21 go well with, filed within the U.S. District Court docket for the Central District of California.
Named as defendants within the go well with are three California companies, 5 attorneys and a paralegal.
Over the past 10 years, the go well with says, the defendants submitted lawyer charges requests totaling greater than $100 million to the Ford Motor Co. on behalf of automotive patrons looking for damages due to allegedly faulty vehicles. The Ford Motor Co. assume that at the least half of the requests, made underneath California’s lemon legislation, are based mostly on inflated charges.
The go well with seeks $100 million in damages for charges paid due to fraudulent billing statements and asks for triple damages.
The Ford Motor Co. alleges that the ringleaders of the enterprise are the Knight Regulation Group and Steve Mikhov, a founding associate and former managing associate of the agency, who now lives in Puerto Rico.
One lawyer billed greater than 20 hours per day at the least 66 occasions, together with 34 occasions that exceeded 24 hours per day, in response to the go well with. A type of requests included “an ostensibly heroic however bodily unattainable 57.5-hour workday in November 2016,” the go well with says.
One other lawyer claimed to have attended “two completely different trials in two completely different jurisdictions on a single day, totaling 29 hours of labor.”
Different attorneys additionally “billed huge quantities of phantom authorized charges,” billing for a similar duties “throughout a large number of circumstances on the identical day,” the go well with says.
By spreading their charge requests throughout quite a few issues in numerous courts, the defendants, “hoodwinked all the judges and attorneys who have been privy solely to info introduced in particular person circumstances,” the go well with contends.
The Knight Regulation Group gave this assertion to the ABA Journal: “Knight Regulation denies the allegations in Ford’s lawsuit. For over 20 years, Knight Regulation and its attorneys have been California’s main lemon legislation shopper rights advocates, profitable quite a few jury verdicts awarding tens of millions of {dollars} in punitive damages on account of Ford’s documented fraudulent misconduct towards customers, and forcing Ford to settle lots of of different circumstances to guard California customers. This motion by Ford is nothing greater than a thinly veiled try and silence companies who would dare to carry them accountable and search justice for customers. This lawsuit—which makes no declare that Knight Regulation’s shoppers have been harmed in any means—mischaracterizes the info, and the declare that billing practices quantity to a ‘racketeering enterprise’ is ridiculous.”
Contact info for Mikhov was not out there from the State Bar of California’s lawyer search web page.
Law360, Reuters, Bloomberg Regulation, the Each day Journal, the Detroit Information, Courthouse Information Service and the Los Angeles Occasions are among the many publications that lined the go well with.
Ford is represented by Kasowitz Benson Torres within the go well with.
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