High Costs and Lost Jobs: Lawsuit Abuse Continues to Hurt California

California is far too expensive for many of its residents, and abuse of the legal system is increasingly playing a role in driving businesses out of the state. 

In recent years, California has seen a dramatic increase in filings for fake injuries and other fraudulent lawsuits. These lawsuits, which often come from unscrupulous personal injury lawyers, are too often based on bogus claims without merit. 

You may be one of the folks that don’t see the harm in letting these cases happen. But understand they are driving up costs for everyone, including you. 

Here’s how.

Those massive settlements you hear about on the local news have to be paid for by someone; more often than not, it’s an insurance company or business. California has allowed so much lawsuit abuse to go on that targeted parties – insurance providers or vulnerable companies – have begun factoring the cost of settlements into the prices they charge consumers. 

As the risk of liability increases, so does the cost of doing business. While consumers might not see added risk when they go to a store or buy insurance, business owners certainly do. So, the result has been a hidden driver of inflation. 

What’s most upsetting is lawmakers could quickly stop it if they just took it seriously. But until then, costs will continue to rise beyond simple consumer goods onto necessities like health insurance and health care, putting a strain on families struggling to pay their medical bills and squeezing everyone else’s pockets. 

As for actual victims seeking justice, lawsuit abuse hurts them too, and not just their wallets. 

Lawsuit abuse is clogging the court system at a time when the state is dealing with a severe backlog. fraudulent cases tie up valuable resources that could be better spent on legitimate lawsuits that have merit and ultimately make it more difficult for people with legitimate claims to get their day in court. 

The bottom line is that lawsuit abuse is a severe problem in California. 

Lawmakers keep talking about fighting inflation, expanding healthcare access, and helping those in need. It shouldn’t be this hard to fix a problem hurting so many. If regulators genuinely want to end this problem, they need to strengthen our laws and make it more difficult for unscrupulous lawyers to file meritless lawsuits. State law empowered trial attorneys to create this issue; legislators have the power to reverse course and solve this problem.

We are not talking about eliminating the right to sue, but just making it harder for fraudulent ones to extract money from victims. 

Only then will we be able to protect honest citizens from being taken advantage of and restore faith in our legal system.