The long-simmering fight between some of L.A.’s best-known billboard attorneys and Uber, one of their most frequent targets, is poised to spill out of the courtroom and onto the November ballot.

The ride-share giant is gathering signatures for an initiative that, if passed by voters, would cap how much attorneys can earn in vehicle collision cases. The company pledges the change will give victims a larger cut of their settlement money, alleging predatory attorneys are inflating medical bills to increase their own profits.

Lawyers claim it will decimate their lucrative niche — car crash lawsuits in the automobile haven that is California — and ultimately leave thousands of people with small or challenging cases unable to sue because they can’t find an attorney.

This fight, lawyers say, is existential.

Attorneys from Sweet James and Jacoby & Meyers — the names and faces of which will be imprinted in the minds of most California drivers — have given almost $1 million to a committee opposing the ballot measure, according to campaign filings. Dozens of other deep-pocketed attorneys have joined, raising an impressive war chest already surpassing $46 million.

“Uber knows darn well what they’ve done,” said Nicholas Rowley, among those leading the opposition. “This law is designed to wipe out ordinary working people’s ability to get representation.”

Attorneys have condemned the fee cap as a Trojan horse meant to trick voters into wrecking the delicate math behind personal injury lawsuits. Currently, personal injury attorneys typically take 33% to 40% of a client’s payout. That is enough, they say, for them to earn a living and risk taking cases on a contingency fee basis — meaning, if they lose, they don’t get paid.

Uber’s proposal would cap attorney fees for car crash cases at 25% and require extra costs — filing fees, depositions, experts — to be calculated before the fee split rather than coming out of the client’s portion.

The two sides have conflicting views of who would be expected to pay for medical fees, which often drain a significant portion of an injured client’s payout. Attorneys said in order to guarantee clients get 75% of the money, lawyers will have to foot the bill for these medical costs, opening the possibility they would walk away with nothing. Uber said the question of who covers medical costs is “not contemplated by the measure” andit expects clients would pay.

The measure would tightly limit what medical expenses can be claimed and curb most damages to rates based on insurance. A doctor-led political action committee opposing the measure has raised more than $4 million, according to campaign finance records, arguing it will prevent Californians from getting treatment.

Uber said in a statement that nothing in the measure prevents car accident victims from securing doctors and lawyers. Instead, the company said, the measure is aimed at tackling a perennial problem in California’s legal system: attorneys pushing car crash victims into expensive surgeries in order to fatten their fees. The only Californians impacted, Uber claims, will be “shady billboard lawyers whose business model relies on abusing auto accident victims for their own personal gain.”

“Californians deserve a system that prioritizes victims over billboard lawyers,” said Adam Blinick, Uber’s head of public policy. “Capping attorney fees, banning kickbacks, and ending inflated medical billing are common-sense reforms that will protect auto accident victims and lower costs, and we’re confident voters will agree.”

Uber has poured fuel on the fire with federal racketeering lawsuits targeting both Downtown LA Law Group, or DTLA, and Jacob Emrani, two prominent personal injury law offices in Southern California. The lawsuits allege the attorneys had “side agreements” with certain doctors to inflate medical bills for unnecessary procedures to get a larger payout.

In an Instagram post, DTLA called the lawsuit a “calculated attempt by a billion-dollar corporation” to suppress legitimate claims. An attorney representing Emrani called it meritless and part of a campaign “to shut the courthouse doors to victims injured by Uber drivers.”

Gearing up for a fight, Consumer Attorneys of California, a powerful trial lawyer trade group, is pushing three ballot measures of its own, including one seeking to increase legal liability for ride-share companies if a passenger is sexually assaulted by a driver and the other aiming to nullify the fee-capping measure if it passes. Billboards have sprung up across Los Angeles reminding Californians that Uber is the subject of a string of recent New York Times investigations into sexual assault by drivers.

The company said it has invested billions in keeping riders safe and has “done more than any other company to confront” sexual violence.

Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy group that sponsored some of the billboards and receives funding from trial attorneys, put out a “consumer alert” branding the fee cap as a “license to kill” measure, claiming it would ultimately pave the way for Uber to move forward with robotaxis without worrying about getting sued. Uber said this was “flat-out untrue” and the measure has nothing to do with autonomous vehicles.

The push by Uber comes at a tense point for California’s legal bar. The Times reported this fall on private investors looking to bankroll California sex abuse cases, and separate allegations of fraudulent lawsuits and unethical conduct by Downtown LA Law Group, a firm known for car crash lawsuits that played a prominent role in L.A. County’s $4-billion sex abuse settlement.

DTLA has denied all wrongdoing and said it operates “with unwavering integrity, prioritizing client welfare.”

Some attorneys worry about how voters will perceive their industry when it’s time to cast ballots.

“I’ll tell you straight up, we could do a better job policing ourselves,” said Rowley, who said he believed the State Bar had historically been weak on California lawyers. “It creates a situation where Uber can do what it’s doing.”

The exterior of Downtown LA Law Group in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

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Calls for reform within California’s legal community have gained momentum in recent months.

Joseph Nicchitta, the county’s interim chief executive officer, called on the State Bar to implement “badly needed ethical reforms” that would make big personal injury cases less profitable for lawyers. Attorney and business advocacy groups have made public pleas to keep private equity out of the state’s legal landscape, worrying it fuels frivolous lawsuits. Gov. Gavin Newsom has similarly expressed unease.

“Our legal system is meant to provide justice, transparency, and accountability — not a business model that uses survivors of abuse or trauma as a revenue stream,” said a spokesperson for the governor. “California can — and must — hold two truths at the same time: standing unequivocally with survivors and victims, while also demanding integrity within the law firms and other businesses that work within our legal system.”

Californians unhappy with problem law firms already have a way to ding them without the ballot measure, Uber’s opponents argue. A new law went into effect Jan. 1 giving private citizens the right to sue an attorney for unethical practices. Many such practices are already illegal but seldom prosecuted. That includes advertising containing false promises and using third parties to solicit clients.

The Times reported this fall that nine plaintiffs represented by Downtown LA Law Group were paid by recruiters to sue the county for sex abuse in juvenile halls, four of whom said they were told to make up claims. The firm has denied paying anyone to file lawsuits.

“This is exactly why we wrote the bill,” said Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), a lawyer who oversees the Senate Judiciary Committee, in response to The Times Dec. 31 story on the firm. “I expect that someone will take it upon themselves to actually enforce that law.”

GameStop is shutting down more stores in California.

The video game, toy and collectible retailer has been struggling to find a way to thrive in a market where most of what it sells is easier to get online. It has been shrinking its brick-and-mortar retail footprint for years to lower costs and has reportedly shut dozens of branches in California.

An unofficial blog tracking store closures estimates that more than 400 GameStop locations, and more than 40 in California, have closed or are slated to close this month.

Calls to 10 GameStop locations across the Southland, including in Inglewood, Canoga Park and Gardena, went unanswered. A recorded message told callers that store associates were “assisting other customers” and to “call back in a few minutes.” One store employee in a San Francisco Bay Area outlet confirmed that the outlet was closing on Thursday.

Gamestop’s official store directory showed many California stores closed all week.

The closures were previously disclosed in the company’s December financial filings, though the exact number wasn’t announced. GameStop did not respond to requests for comment.

The Texas-based video game retailer’s decision to shed locations was the result of a “comprehensive store portfolio optimization review” that looked at market conditions and individual store performance, according to its December Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

GameStop closed 590 stores nationwide during the 2024 fiscal year, according to the filing.

“We anticipate closing a significant number of additional stores in fiscal 2025,” the company said in its December filing. The company’s fiscal year ends on Jan. 31.

GameStop had 2,325 U.S. stores as of Feb. 2025, the company wrote in a March filing.

GameStop has struggled as many customers download video games instead of buying physical copies at brick-and-mortar stores, the company said in the filing.

“Downloading of video game content to the current generation video game systems continues to grow and take an increasing percentage of new video game sales,” the company wrote. “If consumers’ preference for downloading video game content in lieu of physical software continues to increase, our business and financial performance may be adversely impacted.”

The company’s difficulties in staying relevant somewhat echo those of the video chain Blockbuster, which has one remaining location, and RadioShack, once a fixture at malls across America.

GameStop originated in the 1980s as Babbage’s, a computer shop in Dallas that later shifted its focus to video games. The company, which underwent several acquisitions, including by the book retailer Barnes & Noble, was later renamed GameStop.

In 2021, GameStop became the emblematic “meme” stock when investors drove up share prices during an online craze amid hopes there was a way to salvage the already struggling brand.

The company has more recently turned to cryptocurrency. Last May, it announced that it had acquired more than 4,700 Bitcoin, which Reuters estimated at the time to be worth around $513 million.

GameStop shares have been volatile over the last 12 months. As of Thursday, shares had fallen around 25% over that time period.

Uber loves to define itself as a most public-spirited company.

“We’re reimagining how the world moves … to help make transportation more affordable, sustainable, and accessible for all,” as the ride-sharing giant declares on its website.

In 2020, when it spent nearly $100 million to pass Proposition 22, which overturned a state law designating its drivers as employees, gaining them benefits such as a minimum wage and workers compensation coverage, it described the goal of the ballot measure as granting the drivers “the flexibility to decide when, where and how they work.” Never mind that the initiative protected Uber’s business model, which involves sticking its “independent contractor” drivers with the cost of fuel, insurance and wear and tear on their vehicles. The initiative passed.

San Francisco-based Uber is now back in the ballot initiative game, this time with a proposal for a state constitutional amendment capping the fees of plaintiffs’ lawyers representing victims of auto accidents. The proposal, which is in its signature-gathering phase, is aimed at the November ballot.

The initiative text is replete with vituperative language attacking personal injury lawyers as a class. It labels them “self-dealing attorneys” and “billboard attorneys,” and accuses them of deliberately inflating their clients’ medical claims so they can grab a larger fee and engaging in unsavory and perhaps illegal sub-rosa arrangements with complaisant medical providers.

Its putative target is contingency fees, which are typically percentages of the payouts awarded by juries or through negotiations. These are common in personal injury cases, because the clients often don’t have the wherewithal to pay a lawyer’s retainer fee in advance.

The initiative would cap contingency fees at 25% of the award. “Automobile accident victims deserve to keep more of their own recovery,” the initiative says.

“Capping attorney fees, banning kickbacks, stopping inflated medical billing and putting in place whistleblower protections will protect auto-accident victims and have the additional benefit of reducing costs for consumers,” Nathan Click, a spokesman for the initiative campaign, told me by email. He labeled the initiative a “common-sense” reform.

(Just as an aside, whenever I see a legislative proposal described as a “common-sense reform,” I reach for the nearest vomit bag; the phrase almost always is applied to a measure larded with concealed drawbacks, as is this one.)

Superficially, this looks like it could be a win for accident victims. But it’s not really about them; it’s about Uber, which has been the target of lawsuits stemming from injuries its passengers suffer while traveling with its drivers.

Uber doesn’t say how many lawsuits it has faced from passengers, or the size of its financial exposure. But in its most recent annual report, the company acknowledged it “may be subject to claims of significant liability based on traffic accidents, deaths, injuries, or other incidents that are caused by Drivers, consumers, or third parties while using our platform.”

Uber’s bete noire on this issue is Downtown LA Law Group of Los Angeles, which Uber sued in federal court, accusing the firm of “racketeering” and “fraud.” The firm moved to dismiss the suit, but briefing on that won’t be done until spring at the earliest.

I asked Click why Uber thought its accusations against Downtown LA Law Group are so egregious that they warrant rewriting the state constitution. He replied that the Downtown LA case is just “the tip of the spear.”

The law group has been the subject of an investigation by my colleague Rebecca Ellis, who has reported that that nine of the firm’s clients who sued over sex abuse in L.A. County facilities said recruiters paid them to file a lawsuit, including four who said they were told to fabricate claims. The L.A. County District Attorney’s Office is conducting a probe into the allegations. (The law firm denied the accusations.)

But nothing in Ellis’ reporting or what’s known about the county investigation validates Uber’s implicit argument that its behavior is generally characteristic of the plaintiffs’ bar.

The Uber initiative is the latest sally in a long war pitting plaintiffs and their lawyers against businesses, with legal fees as the battleground. In this war lawyers invariably are depicted as soulless and grasping ambulance-chasers unconcerned about their clients’ welfare, and businesses as, well, soulless, grasping and unconcerned about their customers. In the past the battle has been waged between lawyers and doctors, but with this initiative campaign nothing has changed other than the identity of the defendants.

Click pointed out that nothing in the proposed measure would prevent accident victims from suing Uber. But that’s hardly the point. Capping contingency fees makes many lawsuits uneconomical for attorneys, who must shoulder litigation costs such as expert testimony until a final judgment is achieved, and are left holding the bag if there is no recovery or the judgment doesn’t cover their costs. So this initiative, if passed, almost inevitably would reduce the tide of lawsuits filed against Uber.

Indeed, what gives this effort the stench of cynicism and hypocrisy is that we have plenty of experience about what happens when contingency fees are capped: Plaintiffs who have suffered grievous injury (or if they’ve died, their survivors) have trouble even getting through the courtroom door.

The lesson comes from California’s Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975. MICRA capped the noneconomic recoveries — think pain-and-suffering or reduced quality of life — for plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases at $250,000. It also capped plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees on a sliding scale, to as little as 21% on recoveries of six figures or more.

The idea was that the reduced attorney fees would make up for the reduced judgments, but according to a study by the Rand Corp., that didn’t happen. Plaintiffs’ net recoveries were still about 15% lower than they would have been without MICRA, Rand deduced. The result was “a sea change in the economics of the malpractice plaintiffs’ bar,” Rand found, with cases where the judgment cap would cut too deeply into attorney fees getting short shrift.

Those cases tended to be those with “the severest nonfatal injuries (brain damage, paralysis, or a variety of catastrophic losses)”; the median reduction in those patients’ recoveries was more than $1 million. After years of efforts the legislature finally amended MICRA in 2022, when the cap was raised to at least $350,000, with raises placing it at up to $1 million by 2032, followed by annual adjustments to accommodate inflation.

Uber’s proposal would have a larger blast zone than MICRA. Automobile-related injuries are more common than medical malpractice cases, but the range of injuries would seem comparable, up to and including death.

“This would affect every accident in the state,” says Jamie Court, the president and chairman of Consumer Watchdog, the California-based consumer advocacy organization. “Uber is trying to stop all cases, not just bad cases.”

It’s hard to reconcile Uber’s solicitude for accident victims with its most recent legislative victory in Sacramento. That was the passage of SB 371, a measure that cut Uber’s legally required insurance coverage when its drivers and passengers are injured in accidents caused by uninsured or underinsured motorists from $1 million per event to a mere $60,000 per person and $300,000 per incident.

In effect, as an Assembly analysis pointed out, the law shifts costs previously covered by premiums paid by Uber and its fellow ride-sharing firms to their drivers, who pay through their own insurance premiums — and even to passengers, if Uber’s insurance doesn’t cover their injuries.

Uber argued, with supreme nerve, that the $1-million policy requirement was what placed it among the “prime targets” of unscrupulous personal injury lawyers, because the prospect of a big judgment was what got the lawyers’ saliva flowing.

SB 371 sailed through both houses of the state legislature without a single vote in opposition and was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October. I asked Uber why, given the greased passage of a law it desperately desired, it didn’t take the same route to cutting contingency fees rather than an initiative campaign that will swallow up tens of millions of dollars. Click responded that the law specifically covered only the uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage that only the ride-sharing companies have to carry. The initiative, he said, “is much broader.”

If the Uber initiative reaches the ballot, spending by its supporters and opponents might well set records. Uber seeded the campaign with a $12-million contribution in October. But that’s probably just an amuse-bouche, launching a full-size meal.

The initiatives’ target, the personal injury bar, has responded in kind. They’ve proposed two counter-initiatives — one to increase the liability of ride-sharing companies for injuries to their passengers, and another giving Californians the constitutional right to contract with any attorney on any agreed-upon terms. Those initiatives are both in the signature-gathering phase.

Consumer Attorneys of California, the bar’s lobbying organization, already assembled a war chest approaching $50 million in contributions from lawyers and law firms.

Fasten your seat belts. Both sides are just getting started.