Hell on earth is a Los Angeles courtroom.
A report released this week by the American Tort Reform Foundation found that LA is the worst region in the country for “judicial hellholes,” and residents are picking up the tab for excessive litigation based on novel legal theories that result in “nuclear verdicts” with staggering penalties.
California could save jobs, reduce the economic burden on residents and increase the state’s gross product by $95.8 billion if it enacted specific reforms, authors of the study advise. The report found that Los Angeles “separated itself as the worst of the worst” last year due to some of these eye-popping verdicts, ranking ahead of cities like New York City, Philadelphia and St. Louis. One verdict in Los Angeles resulted in a jury awarding nearly $1 billion to the family of an 88-year-old woman who was diagnosed with mesothelioma.
Attorneys in that case reportedly argued that she died from the aggressive form of cancer after using Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder since the 1930s. She was diagnosed in 2020 and died a year later. The jury in the case unanimously awarded the woman’s family with $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages, according to the Daily Journal.
Another case from Los Angeles cited in the report identified a man who received a $50 million verdict in March 2025 after hot coffee spilled on his lap in a Starbucks drive-thru. His attorney originally argued their client was entitled to an award of $125 million. Starbucks could ultimately be required to pay closer to $61 million once prejudgment interest and other costs are added, the report says.
“Los Angeles didn’t land at the top of this list by accident — it earned that spot because its courts have become the go-to venue for outsized payouts and questionable tactics,” said Tiger Joyce, president of the American Tort Reform Association. “When you see a steady drumbeat of eight‑ and nine‑figure awards, you’re seeing a legal culture that rewards emotion over evidence.”
While big companies may be on the hook for the biggest verdicts, the report emphasizes that these actions rarely result in actual improvements and disproportionately hurt small businesses that lack resources to fight back. Productivity and jobs lost as a result of such litigation requires California residents to effectively pay a “tort tax” of $2,458.33 — fourth highest in the nation — and 829,255 jobs are lost each year, according to a 2024 study by The Perryman Group.
In Los Angeles, the numbers were even more grim, as local residents paid a “tort tax” of $3,658 and over 407,500 jobs were lost.
The study specifically calls out California’s Proposition 65, which forces businesses to put warning labels on products if tests find small amounts of chemicals that are deemed carcinogenic or toxic. If a business fails to properly disclose these risks, it can be fined up to $2,500 per day and settlements often cost between $60,000 and $80,000, the report says.
Changing any laws on the books in California could face stiff lobbying opposition. The report found that from the beginning of 2024 through June 30 of this year, trial lawyers in California spent $275.5 million on more than 1.28 million advertisements across television, print, radio, digital platforms and outdoor mediums in the Los Angeles market.
“If the state took meaningful steps to reduce lawsuit abuse, California’s economy could expand by nearly $96 billion — on par with the annual output of a major state economy,” said Jaime Huff, President and CEO of the Civil Justice Association of California. “Yet cities such as Los Angeles continue to bear the cost of an outdated and overburdened legal system.”
The report finds that Los Angeles is particularly susceptible to two trends that abuse the legal system: lemon law exploitation and a tidal wave of frivolous lawsuits citing the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
A handful of Los Angeles-based law firms — such as Knight Law Group — are responsible for an overwhelming majority of California’s lemon law claims, filing thousands annually against automakers, the report says. Officials for Knight Law Group did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The state’s Song-Beverly Act was intended to protect consumers saddled with defective goods such as vehicles, but the report argues that these firms often inflate legal fees well beyond the consumer’s actual damages. In one case cited, a $1,600 consumer award resulted in a $730,000 legal bill.
On the ADA front, Los Angeles is described as a “lawsuit mill” capital. A small number of serial plaintiffs and law firms are filing hundreds of accessibility claims under the ADA and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. Most complaints target small businesses for technical violations like incorrect sign placement or slight slope deviations in ramps. These suits often settle quickly, not to improve access, but to generate fast attorney fees, the report says.
SoCal Equal Access Group was found to have made more than 2,580 ADA filings last year, making up roughly 80% of all ADA lawsuits in California in 2024. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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