Litigation filed under California’s vehicle “Lemon Law” is surging in courts in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
LOS ANGELES - Courts across Los Angeles and Orange counties were swamped last year with levels of civil lawsuits not seen in a decade or more, driven by an upsurge in consumer debt claims, “Lemon Law” lawsuits and employment litigation, a new study concludes.
A study by the legal analytics company Lex Machina published last month reports that both state and federal courts in the two counties saw a major spike in civil filings in 2025. Superior courts in the counties saw more such lawsuits last year than in any year since 2016, according to the report titled “What’s Behind the Surge of Lawsuits in Los Angeles and Orange Counties.”
The same trend played out in the Central District of California federal court, where more civil cases were filed last year than in any year since 2009, the study said.
“These trends show no signs of slowing through the end of 2025, suggesting that Los Angeles will remain one of the most active litigation hubs in the nation in 2026 and beyond,” the Lex Machina report says.
Consumer debt collectors’ lawsuits were among the litigation categories driving the surge. Last year, debt collectors filed more than 182,000 claims against consumers in the two counties’ superior courts, representing a spike of nearly 30% over the previous year’s filings, according to the study.
The report cites economic pressures as well as new legal technology tools, including automation and artificial intelligence, as playing a role in the higher volume of lawsuits.
Adam Masarek, the legal marketing manager at Lex Machina, said legal developments at the state level have contributed to the rise in civil litigation.
“For example, amendments to the California Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) went into effect in July 2024,” Masarek told the Southern California Record in an email. “In relevant part, those amendments increased the share of penalties allocated to plaintiffs from 25% to 35%, further incentivizing plaintiffs, for example, to file PAGA employment lawsuits based on alleged violations of the state’s Labor Code.”
One area cited in the report is litigation filed under the state’s Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act, which provides protections to consumers who purchase defective vehicles, or “lemons.” The act gives buyers the means to impose warranty terms on vehicle manufacturers and provides plaintiff attorneys a vehicle to recover legal costs and attorney fees.
“Since 2021, Song-Beverly litigation has surged in Los Angeles and Orange counties,” the report states. “Plaintiffs filed more than 21,000 Lemon Law claims in those two counties in 2025, a nearly four-fold increase from 2021.”
One car manufacturer, however, is attempting to push back against Lemon Law litigation. Ford last year filed a federal lawsuit against law firms that file Lemon Law cases, accusing them of engaging in a fraudulent scheme to force manufacturers to pay more than $100 million in bogus legal fees. Though that lawsuit was dismissed in November, Ford filed an amended complaint last month against attorneys affiliated with the Knight Law Group LLP (KLG).
“The scheme was carried out through a sophisticated criminal enterprise that ingeniously spread KLG’s fraudulent billings across thousands of cases against many auto manufacturers so that defendants’ fraudulent scheme would go undetected,” Ford’s amended complaint states.
In the category of workplace disputes, Los Angeles County Superior Court recorded more than 9,400 employment-law actions in 2025, according to the Lex Machina study, the highest level of such cases since 2016. Record numbers of such cases were also filed in Orange County Superior Court last year, the study found.
