After helping to spur legal reforms elsewhere in the U.S. to help rein in what it calls lawsuit abuse, a national legal reform advocacy group has turned its focus to California.
The organization known as Protecting American Consumers Together (PACT) is ramping up its campaign to promote reforms of the famously plaintiff-friendly civil court system in California, with a new ad campaign.
Called “Ambulance Lawyer Con,” the campaign seeks to draw attention to what PACT describes as “how ambulance lawyers are taking advantage of Californians, forcing cuts to city services and raising costs for consumers across the Golden State.”
“In California, ambulance lawyers are causing chaos – from fleecing their clients to forcing cities to cut essential services because of frivolous lawsuit payouts,” said PACT Executive Director Lauren Zelt. “Golden State families deserve relief from the yearly $5,400 hidden tax they pay due to lawsuits run amok. This campaign is designed to bring these facts front and center for every Californian.”
California courts have long drawn scrutiny from advocates for business and legal reformers, who have noted the state’s court system and some of its unique laws have helped to fuel waves of lawsuits, placing a heavy burden on employers, manufacturers and consumers alike.
For years, California has regularly landed among the top spots in the rankings of the most plaintiff-friendly legal systems, which critics have said fuel lawsuit abuse and fraud.
Those courts have drawn criticism for serving as hotbeds of big, headline-grabbing jury verdicts, generating big, relatively easy returns for plaintiffs’ lawyers and third party investors who are often backing the lawsuits.
A California jury, for instance, awarded a “mind-boggling” verdict worth nearly $1 billion to the family of a woman who died at the age of 88 about a year after she was diagnosed with a cancer allegedly caused by exposure to trace amounts of asbestos in talc from Johnson & Johnson baby powder.
While J&J has moved to appeal that verdict – which it called the result of a “jury process gone awry” – that cases is just one of thousands of such lawsuits lodged against J&J in courts in California and elsewhere, all of which J&J has asserted are based on “junk science.”
Meanwhile, a jury in Los Angeles ordered Starbucks to pay $50 million to a 30-year-old man who spilled hot coffee in his lap in a drive thru.
Legal reform advocates say the potential for relatively easy paydays from such plaintiff-friendly courts also invites alleged fraud and racketeering.
In 2025, for instance, both automaker Ford and rideshare operator Uber filed suit against plaintiffs’ lawyers who they accused of using California state laws and regulations in California courts to defraud their companies, driving up the price of insurance and inflicting other higher costs on consumers in California and beyond.
PACT hopes to use the ad campaign to draw attention to such alleged abuses of the court system and to help replicate success elsewhere.
PACT has been credited, for instance, with helping to spur legal reforms in the state of Georgia to address such alleged lawsuit abuse.
The group has also launched similar ad campaigns in other large states, including New York and Texas, to “highlight the link between lawsuit abuse and higher costs for everyday Americans.”
PACT said the ads will run across cable television and during an array of professional sports TV broadcasts throughout California.
