If you’ve seen the 2015 film “Mad Max: Fury Road” you may have a pretty good idea of what it’s been like to drive a truck through New Orleans in recent years. The film is a two-hour seminar on how to drive a tractor trailer while smaller vehicles are intentionally colliding with yours.
And that’s what truck drivers have had to contend with in New Orleans over the past decade or so, according to testimony in an ongoing trial taking place this past month.
Jurors in a federal courtroom heard from a parade of insiders who admitted their roles in staging wrecks, recruiting fake victims, and funneling cases to willing attorneys. One witness claimed he helped orchestrate more than 100 crashes; another described weekly cash payments and coded language used to keep the scheme humming.
Prosecutors say a crew of lawyers didn’t just chase ambulances — they helped create the crashes. At the center: injury attorneys Vanessa Motta and Jason Giles, convicted last week of cashing in on a sprawling scheme in which “slammers” deliberately rammed cars into 18-wheelers, then filed bogus insurance claims worth millions.
One federal witness named Damian Labeaud was a “slammer” who testified in court that “he would intentionally crash into commercial vehicles and bring the resulting cases to Giles and others in exchange for kickbacks,” reported WVUE.
“I got involved with it just to make money,” Labeaud said. “It was easier than selling drugs, less risky, less problems for me. It was just easy.”
What was easy money for Labeaud and the lawyers who allegedly paid him made life difficult for everyone else. All of this resulted in higher insurance premiums for everyday Louisiana drivers.
“The (auto) premiums are higher because of this corruption. I’m not aware of anything of this magnitude in Louisiana. This is billions of dollars and literally touches every licensed driver that owns a vehicle in this state,” Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a criminal justice watchdog, told the New Orleans Advocate.
This problem of staged accidents and corrupt rings of lawyers, doctors and accomplices is not confined to New Orleans. The Louisiana crew didn’t come up with this idea. It learned from a similar criminal enterprise in Connecticut.
And in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul is trying to take on her state’s problem with staged accidents. Her office says there were 1,729 intentional accidents in 2023 alone. She’s facing opposition from the trial bar, but is not backing down.
There is “an entire ecosystem of corrupt people who are trying to steal money from all of your pockets with higher premiums, because the insurance companies did not create this scenario. This is not on them,” Hochul said.
“It’s a whole system of criminals and enterprises that are dead set on just trying to squeeze more money out of the system … lawyers, doctors who are fraudulently writing out more excessive claims and damages than actually existed,” Hochul said. “It’s all happening right now.”
But a growing bipartisan coalition is pushing back. They need our support.
Gov. Ron DeSantis led the way in 2022 and 2023 when he pushed for multiple reforms to prevent lawsuit abuse. Florida has seen impressive results. Auto rates for a majority of Florida drivers came down 6 percent in 2025. That trend is continuing in 2026.
In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp went all in on lawsuit abuse reform last year and auto rates are coming down there as well. Louisiana has made some positive strides in the past year, and Indiana is working on reforms this spring.
Yet some politicians in both parties – including in my home state of Texas – continue to talk about counterproductive and artificial price caps on insurance. I understand the desire to do something to help hardworking Americans who are frustrated with the cost of living. But insurance is not the cost-driver. What is? Well, it’s the cost of things that insurance pays for, and legal liability is one of those big cost-drivers.
At the federal level, legislation is needed to bring transparency into who is funding class action lawsuits that are currently shrouded in secrecy. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, currently has proposed a bill to do just that, called the Litigation Funding Transparency Act. Rep. Ben Cline, R-VA, is backing a bill in the House to prevent foreign governments and sovereign wealth funds from financing lawsuits in the U.S., which should be a no-brainer.
And it’s worth keeping in mind that it’s never been more important to drive defensively and keep your head in a swivel when behind the wheel. Your best line of defense is to anticipate problems and avoid them ahead of time.
Sampson is president and CEO of the American Property Casualty Insurance Association
