Personal injury lawyers distort our fault, its cost

By Tracy Mulholland, special to CalMatters

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I’m sitting here staring at a letter addressed to my family and me. My stomach is in knots and I haven’t slept well in weeks. What I thought was a minor fender bender turned into a feast for predatory personal injury lawyers.

I’m crazy. How can a person who looked me in the eye and said it was fine, later ask for the full amount of my insurance policy? Despite minor damage to our vehicles – we were going less than 5 mph – he has racked up thousands of dollars in chiropractic fees.

Here’s how: It’s the same reason people run over each other and flip out when they’re driving, the same reason people say things via keyboard and screen that they wouldn’t have the guts to say out loud.

There is no human-to-human connection. This guy thinks he’s suing the insurance industry. He uses a law firm like the bad guys. I have no doubt that if we sat across the table from each other, he wouldn’t be able to lie about his injuries. He’ll see the stress he’s caused me and my family and think twice about whether the check – much of which he won’t see – is worth it.

I recognize that being injured in an accident is a real and terrifying scenario. People whose lives have been dramatically changed undoubtedly deserve compensation.

But personal injury law firms are polluting the industry, watering down words that should pack a punch, using dramatic language when there is clear evidence that claimants have resumed their normal lives. It’s an insult to those who have actually suffered life-long damage or disability, and it’s a scare tactic that works less on the insurance companies and more on the individuals at fault.

Additionally, there is a clear, incentivized agreement between doctors, medical imaging centers, chiropractors and personal injury attorneys. Lawyers refer accident victims to doctors on their payroll, and doctors use expensive imaging and ambiguous soft tissue injuries to rack up bills.

This leads to higher insurance premiums for all of us. In fact, due to litigation, as well as increased traffic and higher repair costs, California has one of the highest car insurance rates in the nation.

Thanks to social media, I was able to see that the guy who somehow racked up $300,000 worth of damage was riding a motorcycle with one hand while taking pictures for an Instagram story with the other while paying for chiropractic adjustments. The lawyer whose name is on his request form is also on his friends list.

Should I let him go? After all, life is unfair. It seems the rogues win all the time.

Fortunately, the landscape here in California can change. Ann Uber-ballot-backed measure targeting referral agreements between personal injury law firms and physicians to vote in the 2026 election.

This would prevent the treating physician from having a prior relationship or financial arrangement with the plaintiff’s attorney, hopefully reducing the amount of fraudulent claims. It would too limiting the lawyer’s percentage to 25%; they currently take about a third of the payout.

However, there are some problems with the bill, including caps on financial damages that could harm those who are actually seriously injured in an accident.

However, the bill addresses a major problem: strange medical billing arrangements with law firms leading to expensive insurance premiums. Regardless of whether the ballot measure passes, we all need some reflection on how we treat one another. We are neighbors, fellow citizens, and wrong people trying to make things right in a world where things seem so wrong.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.