A continued effort by an Uber-backed group to cap attorney’s fees — despite a state Supreme Court ruling against its ballot initiative — is showing up around Nevada in the form of a large-scale advertising campaign.

Digital and billboard advertisements around Las Vegas, Reno and Carson City rail against “greedy lawyers” and “lawsuit abuse,” the subject of a ballot initiative that gained more than 206,000 signatures in 2024.

Nevadans For Fair Recovery, a political action committee that brought the petition initiative to cap attorney fees in civil cases at 20 percent, was behind the ballot effort. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Jan. 27 that the initiative’s description was “misleading and confusing.”

The decision prevented the initiative from going to the Nevada Legislature for consideration during the 2025 session or from going to voters in the 2026 general election. About a week after in early February, the group turned its funding toward a media blitz.

Spokesperson Karen Griffin said the open-ended campaign reflects that the group is “back to square one” after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Griffin said the group will watch how the Legislature takes up the issue, if at all.

“We’re really committed to this issue and committed to continuing to fund it moving forward,” Griffin said. “Because ultimately, the insurance industry is in crisis. It’s at the root of the problem, and we have a system in Nevada that incentivizes and sanctions legal abuse in a lot of ways.”

Nevadans for Fair Recovery argues excessive attorney’s fees from “billboard attorneys” eat into settlements for plaintiffs and drive up the costs of everyday goods, services and insurance rates. The petition’s opponents contend Uber was trying to make it easier for the company, and others like it, to hire expensive defense attorneys to fight lawsuits while limiting citizen’s abilities to find legal representation.

That’s because contingency fees in civil cases — which are currently not capped in most cases — tie the cost of the attorney’s services to the results of the case. Civil plaintiffs’ attorneys say a cap could discourage attorneys from taking smaller cases or force some firms to switch to an hourly rate model.

Reform efforts elsewhere

Nevadans for Fair Recovery’s sole supporter is Uber. The San Francisco-based ridesharing company poured $5 million into the PAC last year, according to campaign finance reports, and the company has seven paid lobbyists registered for this legislative session.

Nevada is not the only state where Uber is pushing insurance and legal reforms. The company launched a million-dollar ad campaign in California, Georgia, Nevada and New York, according to Sacramento-based TV station KTXL.

Attorney Deepak Gupta, who represented Uber Sexual Assault Survivors for Legal Accountability and the Nevada Justice Association, said the campaign likely reflects the company’s broader effort to change legal and insurance laws. He said they believe Uber sees Nevada as “a testing ground” for policy reform.

“It continues to be troubling, because they are pushing a proposal that would be the most extreme limit on access to the civil justice system in the country but attempting to portray it as something very different,” Gupta said. “And it’s no surprise why they’re doing this. It’s been a moment when this company faces thousands of sexual assault claims.”

Justin Watkins, a partner at Battle Born Injury Lawyers and a non-paid lobbyist for the Nevada Justice Association, said he was surprised to see the media campaign.

“I’m confused as to their continuous effort, to be honest with you, to apply pressure to the Legislature to change laws or to complain about laws that they themselves wrote,” Watkins said, referring to ridesharing regulations set in the 2015 legislative session. “I’m up here in Carson City right now, and there is no proposal from Uber or anybody else to change the structure of the laws that they themselves wrote and are complaining about in these media campaigns.”

Nevada Justice Association has 11 paid and 13 non-paid lobbyists registered during this session, legislative reports show.

Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on X.