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Inside the Ticking Clock

• One California attorney allegedly billed 57.5 hours in a single day, including 12.9 hours for a single procedural task
• Ford seeks $300M in damages, claiming widespread RICO violations involving thousands of Lemon Law cases
• Allegations include cross-state double-booked trial attendance and massive attorney stacking, with 10-15 lawyers assigned per case

By Samuel Lopez – USA Herald

In what Ford Motor Co. is calling a "magical mystery tour" of fraudulent legal billing, the auto giant has filed a sweeping federal lawsuit against a group of California law firms, alleging an orchestrated scheme to siphon hundreds of millions through bloated attorney fees in Lemon Law cases.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California under case number 25-04550, names Knight Law Group LLP and eight additional attorneys and law firms as defendants. Ford alleges the firms coordinated a long-running racket to inflate billable hours, exploiting California's Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act (commonly known as the Lemon Law), which allows attorneys to recover "reasonable" fees when representing consumers against vehicle manufacturers.

The most shocking detail? One attorney—Knight Law Group partner Amy Morse—allegedly claimed to work 57.5 hours in a single day on November 30, 2016. According to Ford's complaint, that included nearly 13 hours spent preparing and responding to "requests for admission" — routine documents in pretrial discovery that often take a fraction of that time.

And Morse wasn’t the only one on the clock. Ford alleges another attorney billed a stunning 29 hours on the same day for two trials—one in Los Angeles, and one near San Francisco, roughly 400 miles apart.

"This is about a pattern of abuse—a racketeering enterprise under the guise of advocacy," said Grant Cunningham, a Los Angeles attorney familiar with the case. "What Ford is alleging strikes at the heart of trust in consumer protection law."

The Alleged Scheme: How the Clock Was Broken According to Ford, the Knight Law Group masterminded a complex operation of overstaffing cases with 10 to 15 attorneys, spreading exaggerated time entries across various firms in an effort to avoid detection.

Ford claims the scheme impacted thousands of Lemon Law lawsuits and estimates losses of more than $100 million over five years. The automaker is now pursuing over $300 million in treble damages under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

The lawsuit highlights how Knight Law and associated firms would:

• Stack cases with unnecessary attorneys
• Inflate legal tasks with implausible time entries
• Submit billing statements with overlapping hours or physically impossible schedules

The company referred to the alleged billing irregularities as a "deliberate smokescreen" intended to overwhelm and evade scrutiny by automakers and the courts.

The Legal Landscape: Song-Beverly and RICO Collide California’s Lemon Law was designed to protect consumers from defective vehicles by ensuring they could obtain legal representation without financial barriers. Under the Song-Beverly Act, prevailing plaintiffs are entitled to recover "reasonable attorney’s fees" from manufacturers.

But Ford alleges that consumer protection became the pretext for systemic abuse.

By invoking RICO—a law typically used to dismantle organized crime networks—Ford signals its intent to treat this not as isolated misconduct, but a criminal conspiracy. RICO allows plaintiffs to seek triple damages and attorney fees if they can prove a pattern of racketeering activity involving fraud.

If Ford prevails, it could open the floodgates for other automakers to pursue similar claims and potentially reshape how legal fees are monitored in consumer rights litigation.

No Response From Defendants... Yet As of publication, none of the nine defendants have publicly responded to the lawsuit.

Implications for Legal Billing and Consumer Justice The case poses high stakes not only for the firms involved but for the broader Lemon Law bar and potentially all contingent fee practices.

"This isn't just about Ford. If proven, these claims could spark a reckoning across contingency fee litigation,"Cunningham noted. "Every law firm billing under fee-shifting statutes could come under renewed scrutiny."

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Fact-Check Section

• California Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act
• RICO Statute - 18 U.S. Code § 1962
• Case Docket: Ford Motor Co. v. Knight Law Group LLP et al