FOLLOW US

Sometimes a viral internet trend leaves behind more than just embarrassing headlines — it leaves behind a billion-dollar mess. American insurers can now sue South Korean automakers over payouts tied to thousands of stolen Kias and Hyundais, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday, directing a federal judge in Santa Ana to reopen a case seeking reimbursement for more than $1 billion in claims.

Another Legal Punch Lands

This ruling adds to an already mounting pile of legal trouble for the automakers, which have previously settled a $145 million class-action lawsuit with car buyers and a separate $9 million case brought by state attorneys general — both tied to allegations that manufacturers stripped a key ignition safeguard from U.S.-bound models, effectively flooding American streets with easy-to-steal vehicles that became infamous through the so-called Kia Boys challenge that went viral on TikTok back in 2022.

A Problem With Decades Left to Run

The timing couldn't be more pointed. This decision arrives just as a new UCLA study warns that thefts of the automakers' most vulnerable models will likely continue plaguing Los Angeles for years — potentially decades — to come.

"We're likely to be seeing elevated thefts of these cars through 2042," said the study's lead author, Jeffrey Brantingham, a UCLA anthropology professor, painting a picture of a problem with staying power rather than a fading trend.

The Missing Piece That Started It All

At the heart of the theft epidemic sits a missing safety feature called an engine immobilizer, pioneered in the mid-1980s when more than 60,000 cars were being stolen annually in Los Angeles alone. By the turn of the century, immobilizers had become as standard as airbags and antilock brakes — technology so universal that its absence became almost unthinkable. "If there's one thing that auto manufacturers have done to really reduce auto theft, it's been the introduction of immobilizers," Brantingham said.

Slipping Under the Radar

That's precisely what made Kia and Hyundai's decision so consequential. The technology had become so ubiquitous that thieves initially didn't notice when Kia quietly dropped immobilizers from many American models in 2011, or when Hyundai followed suit five years later.

"If all cars have immobilizers, and you're the one car that doesn't, you can mostly slip under the radar," Brantingham explained. According to him, thieves simply didn't realize these particular Hyundai and Kia models were vulnerable until around 2020 — nearly a decade after the safeguard first disappeared.

The Pandemic Created Perfect Conditions

That discovery coincided with a nationwide theft surge, particularly acute in Los Angeles, where thefts roughly doubled between the summer of 2019 and the summer of 2020. L.A. County, home to nearly 8 million registered vehicles, saw tens of thousands of cars sitting idle on streets during the pandemic's early months — right as thousands of potential thieves found themselves laid off from work and sent home from school, creating a kind of perfect storm of opportunity and idle hands.

A Local Discovery That Went National

Data cited by the UCLA researchers suggests local boosters in L.A. were among the first to realize Hyundais and Kias lacked immobilizers, triggering a spike in targeted thefts that actually predated the broader national trend. "It was an independent discovery," Brantingham noted.

From Regional Trend to Viral Phenomenon

Thefts in Los Angeles were already climbing when Milwaukee-based boosters launched their now-infamous Kia Boys videos in the summer of 2021, and the trend had already begun leveling off locally by the time the meme exploded into national news roughly a year later.

"There were some cities in the U.S. that had no idea about this vulnerability until the summer of 2022," Brantingham said. "If you look at Atlanta, you can see as soon as the story broke in June of '22 — boom! Kia and Hyundai thefts just exploded." It was less a slow burn and more a lit match tossed onto dry brush.

A Problem That Refuses to Fade

While overall car thefts in California have dropped sharply in recent years, the Kia Boys models remain stubbornly attractive to criminals — a pattern Brantingham expects to trickle from middle-class neighborhoods into poorer ones as these vehicles filter through the secondary used-car market.

Why the Same Cars Keep Getting Stolen

Part of the problem lies in who's actually doing the stealing. Most modern car thieves are joyriders or commuters rather than professional thieves selling parts, meaning the overwhelming majority of stolen vehicles get recovered and returned in drivable condition — ready to be stolen all over again. "How many times is that Hyundai Sonata going to be stolen while it's on the road?" Brantingham mused, capturing the almost absurd repetition of the cycle.

The Insurance Industry Fights Back

Insurers say they've already paid out more than $1 billion in claims and related costs tied to theft and attempted theft of these vulnerable vehicles — and now they want the automakers to foot that bill instead. Roughly 200 car insurance companies sued the South Korean manufacturers, alleging the companies deliberately removed the safety feature from American-bound cars while keeping it standard everywhere else in the world. Those suits were consolidated into a group of related actions in California federal court.

A Setback, Then a Reversal

U.S. District Judge James V. Selna initially dismissed the complaint, ruling his Santa Ana courtroom lacked jurisdiction over the foreign automakers — a decision that seemed to close the door on the insurers' billion-dollar claim entirely.

This week, though, the 9th Circuit reversed that ruling, finding the companies had intentionally withheld immobilizers as an "upsell" feature for American buyers, effectively turning millions of base models into vehicles that could be hot-wired with little more than a screwdriver.

Why California Became Ground Zero

The appellate panel determined that because more than 70% of all Hyundai and Kia shipments to the U.S. passed through California ports, the vast majority of vehicles lacking working immobilizers were effectively "targeted" toward the state.

"Even though the Korean entities did not themselves sell the allegedly defective vehicles in California, they expressly aimed their intentional and allegedly tortious actions at California by sending thousands of shipments of vehicles to and through California's ports," Judge Eric D. Miller wrote for the panel. He added that the automakers' U.S.-specific design choices further supported the conclusion that they had "purposefully directed the defective vehicles to California."

Back to Square One in Orange County

With the reversal now in place, the case returns to Judge Selna's court in Orange County — putting insurers back on track to pursue the billion-dollar reimbursement claim that once seemed dead on arrival.

For automakers already reeling from settlements and viral infamy, this ruling signals that the financial reckoning tied to a missing piece of hardware — and a TikTok trend that exposed it to the world — is far from finished.