Personal injury lawyers distort our mistakes and the price we pay for them

I am sitting here staring at a letter addressed to my family and me. My stomach is sewn in knots and I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in weeks. What I thought was a minor fender bender has turned into a feast for predatory personal injury lawyers. 

I am maddened. How could a man who looked me in the eye and said he was fine later demand the full amount of my insurance policy? Despite minor damage to our vehicles — we were going less than 5 miles per hour —  he has accrued thousands of dollars in chiropractic fees. 

Here’s how: It’s the same reason people race around one another and flip each other off when driving, the same reason people say things through a keyboard and a screen that they wouldn’t have the audacity to speak aloud. 

There is no person-to-person relationship. This man thinks he’s suing the insurance industry. He is using a law firm as the bad guys. I have no doubt that if we sat at a table across from one another he would be unable to lie about his injuries. He would see the stress it has caused me and my family and think twice on whether the check — much of which he will not see — is worth it.  

I acknowledge that suffering an injury during an accident is a real and terrible scenario. People whose lives are dramatically altered undoubtedly deserve compensation.

But injury law firms are polluting the industry, watering down words that should pack a punch, using dramatized language when there is clear evidence that plaintiffs have resumed their normal lives. It’s an insult to those who have actually sustained harm or lifelong disabilities, and it’s a scare tactic that works less on insurance companies and more on the individuals at fault.  

Furthermore, there is a clear, incentivized arrangement between doctors, medical imaging centers, chiropractors and injury lawyers. Lawyers refer the accident victims to doctors under their payroll and the doctors use expensive imaging and ambiguous soft tissue damages 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 man who somehow accrued what he deems is $300,000-worth of damages has been riding a motorcycle with one hand as he films himself for an Instagram story with the other, all while billing for chiropractic adjustments. The lawyer whose name is on the letterhead of his demand letter is also on his list of friends. 

Do I let it go? Life is, after all, unfair. The dishonest seem to win all the time.  

Luckily, the landscape here in California may be changing. An Uber-backed ballot measure addressing the referral agreements between injury law firms and doctors is up for a vote in the 2026 elections. 

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

There are, however, some issues with the bill, including caps on financial damages, which could harm those who actually are seriously injured in an accident. 

The bill addresses a core issue, however: the outlandish medical billing agreements with billboard law firms leading to costly insurance premiums. Regardless of whether the ballot measure passes, we are all in need of some reflection on the way we treat one another. We are neighbors, fellow citizens and fallible humans trying to get it right in a world where things can feel so wrong.