an award of $125 million<\/a>. Starbucks could ultimately be required to pay closer to $61 million once prejudgment interest and other costs are added, the report says.<\/p>\n Walter Cicchetti \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n
\u201cLos Angeles didn\u2019t land at the top of this list by accident \u2014 it earned that spot because its courts have become the go-to venue for outsized payouts and questionable tactics,\u201d said Tiger Joyce, president of the American Tort Reform Association. \u201cWhen you see a steady drumbeat of eight\u2011 and nine\u2011figure awards, you\u2019re seeing a legal culture that rewards emotion over evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
While big companies may be on the hook for the biggest verdicts, the report emphasizes that these actions rarely result in actual improvements and disproportionately hurt small businesses that lack resources to fight back. Productivity and jobs lost as a result of such litigation requires California residents to effectively pay a \u201ctort tax\u201d of $2,458.33 \u2014 fourth highest in the nation \u2014 and 829,255 jobs are lost each year, according to a 2024 study by The Perryman Group.<\/p>\n
American Tort Reform Foundation<\/p>\n
In Los Angeles, the numbers were even more grim, as local residents paid a \u201ctort tax\u201d of $3,658 and over 407,500 jobs were lost.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The study specifically calls out California\u2019s Proposition 65, which forces businesses to put warning labels on products if tests find small amounts of chemicals that are deemed carcinogenic or toxic. If a business fails to properly disclose these risks, it can be fined up to $2,500 per day and settlements often cost between $60,000 and $80,000, the report says.<\/p>\n
American Tort Reform Foundation<\/p>\n
Changing any laws on the books in California could face stiff lobbying opposition. The report found that from the beginning of 2024 through June 30 of this year, trial lawyers in California spent $275.5 million on more than 1.28 million advertisements across television, print, radio, digital platforms and outdoor mediums in the Los Angeles market.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the state took meaningful steps to reduce lawsuit abuse, California\u2019s economy could expand by nearly $96 billion \u2014 on par with the annual output of a major state economy,\u201d said Jaime Huff, President and CEO of the Civil Justice Association of California. \u201cYet cities such as Los Angeles continue to bear the cost of an outdated and overburdened legal system.\u201d<\/p>\n
American Tort Reform Foundation<\/p>\n
The report finds that Los Angeles is particularly susceptible to two trends that abuse the legal system: lemon law exploitation and a tidal wave of frivolous lawsuits citing the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).<\/p>\n
A handful of Los Angeles-based law firms \u2014 such as Knight Law Group \u2014 are responsible for an overwhelming majority of California\u2019s lemon law claims, filing thousands annually against automakers, the report says.\u00a0Officials for Knight Law Group did not immediately respond to request for comment.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s Song-Beverly Act was intended to protect consumers saddled with defective goods such as vehicles, but the report argues that these firms often inflate legal fees well beyond the consumer\u2019s actual damages. In one case cited, a $1,600 consumer award resulted in a $730,000 legal bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the ADA front, Los Angeles is described as a \u201clawsuit mill\u201d capital. A small number of serial plaintiffs and law firms are filing hundreds of accessibility claims under the ADA and California\u2019s Unruh Civil Rights Act. Most complaints target small businesses for technical violations like incorrect sign placement or slight slope deviations in ramps. These suits often settle quickly, not to improve access, but to generate fast attorney fees, the report says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
American Tort Reform Association\/Instgram<\/p>\n
SoCal Equal Access Group was found to have made more than 2,580 ADA filings last year, making up roughly 80% of all ADA lawsuits in California in 2024. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hell on earth is a Los Angeles courtroom. A report released this week by the American Tort Reform…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7,48,52,51,1016,47,50,49,3989,3586],"class_list":{"0":"post-90927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-headlines","11":"tag-la-news","12":"tag-lawsuits","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","15":"tag-los-angeles-news","16":"tag-starbucks","17":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}