Ford v Lawyers: Lawsuit takes the Blue Oval to court, and Ford sues right back
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You can get sued for just about anything in this country. But let’s face it, some things warrant a trip to court. Like the case of Ford Motor Company v. Knight Law Group LLP, et. al., wherein Ford filed a lawsuit against a law group after it sued the Blue Oval for California Lemon Law violations. The lawsuit alleges that lawyers with a few law groups “inflated billings [that] total at least $100 million over 5 years.”
Knight Law Group sued Ford for Lemon Law violations, just to get a lawsuit from Ford for inflating bills to the tune of $100M
We’ve all had workdays that seem like they just won’t end. In some cases, like those of military servicemembers or first responders, a 24-hour “workday” can just be part of the norm. But as long as those days might seem, they can’t total more than 24 hours. In the case of lawyers working for Knight Law Group to sue Ford over California Lemon Law violations, one lawyer managed to jam nearly 60 hours in a single workday.
It’s indicative of why Ford would turn around and sue the law group following the first lawsuit. The Blue Oval filed a lawsuit under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, alleging that members of Knight Law Group, the Altman Law Group, and Wirtz Law inflated bills. To no small amount, either. Ford alleges that the total effort of fraudulent actions is in excess of $100 million, per Car Complaints.
So, just how did these lawyers pull it off? The Blue Oval says the evidence points to lawyers asserting that they had attended depositions and trials on opposite ends of California concurrently. Impressive? Not compared to sci-fi-esque time manipulation. Ford also says that one lawyer named in the lawsuit pulled off “an ostensibly heroic but physically impossible 57.5-hour workday” during the first suit. That’s quite a superpower.
It’s all part of what Ford claims was a coordinated effort to dupe the Blue Oval out of millions by billing for “phantom time.” According to the lawsuit, “They allegedly did so by abusing and misusing the fee-shifting aspects of the Song-Beverly Act in California. Based on the investigation and the allegations in the complaint, as to Ford alone, these fraudulent and inflated billings total at least $100 million over 5 years.”
