A Ford dealership sign.
LOS ANGELES — Ford Motor Co. has opened a new front in its legal fight against law firms it accuses of using lawsuits filed under California's stringent so-called Lemon Law to extract many millions of dollars in fraudulent legal fees, this time taking aim at a company the automaker says has billed for case work supposedly done by its lawyers, but allegedly actually performed by "an army" of low-wage non-lawyer "virtual assistants" based in The Philippines and elsewhere overseas.
Ford made the claims public in a lawsuit filed June 18 in Los Angeles federal court against L.A.-based firm Quill & Arrow.
"Quill holds itself out as a California law firm specializing in consumer claims under California’s Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act (the 'Lemon Law')," Ford wrote in its complaint. "In truth, Quill is not principally a law firm — it is a fraudulent and illegal billing factory, conceived and constructed to exploit the Lemon Law’s fee-shifting provisions by manufacturing tens of thousands of cases and billing Ford and other automakers at California attorney rates for work performed entirely by non-lawyers earning as little as $13 per hour.
"... From engagement by its clients to final payment by Ford, fraudulent, unlawful, and unfair business practices permeate the entire lifecycle of each of the thousands of Lemon Law claims Quill manufactures each year," Ford wrote.
The lawsuit specifically accuses Quill & Arrow of illegally refusing to return tens of millions of dollars Ford claims they paid to the firm under court judgments or settlements, but which Ford says it has since learned were allegedly fraudulently inflated.
The lawsuit comes as Ford's latest effort to address a continuing onslaught of cases lodged by people claiming they are owed money under California law after purchasing allegedly defective vehicles.
Such lawsuits are typically brought under California's uniquely powerful "lemon law," formally known as the Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act.
The law, which gives California residents unique powers to sue automakers over alleged defects in their vehicles, has been used by trial lawyers to assail Ford and other automakers with tens of thousands of lawsuits per year in Golden State courts.
According to court data, California plaintiffs, for instance, filed more than 38,000 lemon law cases in the state in 2025, up from 25,000 in 2024 and 22,000 in 2023.
By some estimates, as much as 10 percent of all civil court filings in Los Angeles state courts involve lemon law claims.
The rapidly growing number of cases has caught the eye of lawsuit abuse reform advocates in California and nationally, and turned up the volume on calls for both reform and investigations into potential fraud.
Ford has helped to spearhead the pushback, as the automaker has used court filings of its own to shine on a light on the alleged fraud that they claim accounts for at least a large chunk of the growth in such lawsuits.
In 2025, for instance, Ford sued the Knight Law Firm, accusing the L.A.-based firm of allegedly submitting fake billing records to the courts to drive up the amount of attorney fees they could potentially recover across thousands of lawsuits that firm as lodged in recent years
Ford has claimed the allegedly fake billing records led to Ford paying the Knight firm lawyers and their referring partners at least $100 million more than they should have across their cases..
A Los Angeles federal judge, however, tossed Ford's action, siding with the Knight Firm defendants, who had argued Ford was attempting to improperly use the lawsuit to punish the firm for its lemon law success in court.
Ford has appealed that ruling to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where it remains pending.
In the meantime, Ford expanded its legal campaign against allegedly fraudulent fees with its lawsuit against the Quill firm.
In the new complaint, Ford asserts the Quill firm has run "a sweeping and systematic scheme ... to defraud Ford of tens of millions of dollars through fabricated attorney billing records, unauthorized practice of law, and deliberate obstruction of Ford’s ability to fulfill its warranty obligations to its own customers that, among numerous other consequences, damages Ford’s relationship with its customers and erodes future sales."
The lawsuit accuses the Quill firm of alleged wrongdoing on multiple fronts.
They assert the firm has allegedly recruited thousands of clients to bring lawsuits against Ford and then allegedly improperly coached them to avoid giving Ford the chance to simply repurchase the allegedly defective vehicle, as the California law gives Ford the chance to do.
Ford asserts this strategy, which leaves clients skipping straight to lawsuits over other, non-litigation resolution options, provides no benefits to the clients, but ensures the law firms filing the lawsuits will get paid thousands of dollars in fees per client.
Then, Ford asserts most of the actual work of developing and filing the lawsuits is performed by low-wage "overseas virtual assistants —sometimes referred to by Quill as 'bots' —and domestic nonattorney staff."
However, Quill allegedly then billed that work as being done by the firm's attorneys, "at California attorney rates of $350 to $950 per hour," allegedly "supported by false sworn declarations stating that the billing records are contemporaneous attorney time entries that Quill's Co-Founding Partner has 'carefully reviewed and audited.'
"In fact, the billing records are utter fabrications," Ford said.
Ford asserts in its lawsuits that the time records represented in Quill's billing records and fee claims represented "facially suspect temporal impossibilities" — meaning, Ford claims the firm's handful of actual attorneys could not have performed the actual work billed.
Ford noted in its complaint that it has paid Quill & Arrow over $100 million across thousands of cases since 2021. And the automaker claimed at least half of those fees were "fraudulently and illegally obtained through Quill’s systematic misrepresentation that tasks performed by nonlawyers were performed by California-licensed attorneys."
Ford is asking the court to order the Quill firm to pay at least $25 million in damages, plus attorney fees, and to order the firm to cease the conduct alleged in the lawsuit.
"At a time when consumer sentiment against American companies is at an all-time high—and hostility to 'Big Auto' is particularly severe—Quill’s actions cause ongoing harm that cannot be redressed through a mere damages award," Ford wrote.
Ford's latest lawsuit was saluted by legal reform and business advocates, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform.
ILR President Scott Waguespack said the claims laid out in the lawsuit stand out as a prime example of the need for legal reform and the harmful effects of lawsuit abuse on the economies of California and the nation.
“This case proves what we have been saying about our legal system: widespread, out-of-control billboard lawyer tactics are inflating costs across the economy, and American families are paying the price,” said Waguespack, in an emailed statement. “The fact that our lawsuit system costs the average American household $4,200 per year due, in part, to frivolous litigation, should outrage every policymaker and every consumer. It’s past time to put an end to this destructive cycle. Americans deserve a legal system that delivers justice, not one that benefits those who exploit it.”
Ford is represented in the lawsuit by attorneys from the firm of Kasowitz LLP, of Los Angeles and New York.
Quill & Arrow has not yet responded to the lawsuit in court.
