Lawyer Reportedly Charged 57 Hours In A Single Day, And Ford Isn’t Amused | Carscoops

      Ford has initiated a lawsuit against attorneys who represented clients in Lemon Law cases against the automaker.

      The company alleges that these lawyers fraudulently overbilled for services over several years, resulting in a loss of $100 million.

      Ford contends that one attorney logged 57 hours in a single day, while another billed for two separate appearances on the same day.

      While California’s Lemon Law is designed to safeguard consumers from being exploited, Ford now asserts that it is the one being taken advantage of. In this recent lawsuit, the automaker accuses several attorneys of deceiving the company by producing falsified and inflated invoices.

      Ford has filed the lawsuit against nine defendants in a federal court in Los Angeles, charging them with orchestrating extensive fraud over the years while representing customers seeking to reject defective vehicles under the Lemon Law.

      The automaker claims that the law firms colluded to commit fraud, violating the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act by exploiting Ford’s obligation to fund legal services and court costs incurred by dissatisfied customers.

      The “magical mystery tour of fictitious billings” allegedly features instances of fabricated work and time entries that range from hard to believe to entirely implausible. Attorney Amy Morse, a partner at Knight Law Group, is claimed by Ford to have "billed over 20 hours in a single day on at least 66 occasions, 34 of which surpassed 24 hours, including a seemingly heroic but physically impossible 57.5-hour workday in November 2016."

      Incredible Hours, Exaggerated Invoices

      Ford further claims that another attorney billed 29 hours for preparing and traveling to two separate trials that occurred on the same day, located more than 380 miles apart in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

      The automaker believes that about half of the legal fee requests it received were fraudulent and suspects that other automakers might also be impacted. It seeks at least $300 million in damages, while the lawyers strongly deny the allegations.

      “This action by Ford is merely a thinly disguised effort to intimidate firms that would dare to hold them accountable and pursue justice for consumers,” Knight Law stated in an email to The Daily Journal.