— California Lemon Law lawyers who were sued by Ford Motor argue in a motion to dismiss the Ford lawsuit is nothing more than "retaliatory" and should be thrown out.
The Ford lawsuit accuses Knight Law Group, the Altman Law Group and Wirtz Law of overbilling the automaker by tens of millions of dollars over the past decade.
The law groups allegedly inflated their bills and violated the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
The alleged overbilling was for California Lemon Law cases that involved a total of about $100 million in billing over the past five years. Ford argues it found evidence of thousands of fee applications that were false and fraudulent and not caught by judges overseeing the lawsuits.
According to Ford's lawsuit, Lemon Law attorneys abused the billing fee structure regarding California's Song-Beverly Act and "inflated billings [that] total at least $100 million dollars over 5 years."
Ford argues the same Lemon Law lawyers allegedly went to trials in different parts of California but apparently at the exact same time. Ford also claims it has evidence of lawyers billing for working more than 24 hours in one day.
And in one allegation, Ford says a Lemon Law attorney who sued Ford worked a "physically impossible 57.5-hour workday in November 2016.”
The Ford Lemon Law fee lawsuit alleges Ford and other automakers paid for work that wasn't performed along with phantom time that totaled at least tens of millions of dollars.
Motion to Dismiss Ford's Lemon Law Fee Lawsuit
According to Knight Law, Ford is trying to get back at Lemon Law companies due to successful lawsuits against Ford in court. The motion to dismiss alleges the lawsuit is retaliatory and Ford is trying to use the “thermonuclear device” of a federal RICO statute.
Ford is also allegedly trying to "chill its litigation adversaries—law firms, lawyers, and staff who represent consumers harmed by Ford’s defective vehicles."
The motion says Ford is not only trying to chill its litigation adversaries, but the automaker is supposedly trying to interfere with fundamental First Amendment rights.
"As one court put it, if litigation activities could serve as a basis for a RICO claim, 'almost any lawsuit could spawn a retaliatory action, which would inundate the federal courts with procedurally complex RICO pleadings, engender wasteful satellite litigation, and spawn ad infinitum litigation with each party claiming that the opponent’s previous action was malicious and meritless.'” — Knight Law's motion to dismiss
According to Knight Law, a series of Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit cases show Lemon Law companies are protected by the First Amendment and the Noerr-Pennington doctrine.
And according to the motion:
"Noerr-Pennington recognizes a party’s right to litigate in court without fear of reprisal and requires dismissal of claims predicated on underlying litigation activity to avoid chilling the exercise of that right."
Ford's claims allegedly "fail on their face" regarding a criminal RICO enterprise conducted by three Lemon Law firms which have a record of court wins against Ford.
Ford also allegedly fails to adequately allege racketeering activity to the specificity required by the law and allegedly completely fails to adequately allege wire fraud.
Ford's Lemon Law lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California: Ford Motor Company v. Knight Law Group LLP, et. al.
Ford is represented by Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP