It is no secret within the insurance defense bar that a growing number of plaintiffs’ attorneys are artificially inflating the value of their personal injury cases against defendants with large insurance policies – including against airlines, airports, and ground handling companies – by sending their plaintiff clients to treat with hand-selected doctors who provide their services subject to a medical lien, rather than having their clients’ treatment paid for by available workers’ compensation insurance, private health insurance, or Medicare/Medicaid.
The reason for this increasing trend is simple. The fees that many, if not most, of the doctors who treat personal injury plaintiffs subject to a medical lien are much higher than the fees charged by doctors who provide treatment that is paid for by workers’ compensation insurance, private health insurance, or Medicare/Medicaid. The fees for treatment subject to a medical lien typically far exceed the usual, customary, and reasonable rates charged by doctors for the same treatment in the same geographical location.
These inflated fees provide plaintiffs’ attorneys with increased leverage during settlement negotiations with defendants in personal injury cases. After settlement, the personal injury plaintiff attorneys and their medical lien doctors will then typically negotiate down the amount of repayment of the medical lien based on the amount of the settlement. Therefore, personal injury plaintiffs’ attorneys are incentivized to send their clients to doctors who are willing to provide their services subject to a medical lien, and the attorneys’ pre-selected doctors are incentivized to inflate the cost of treatment that is provided subject to a medical lien.
The rideshare service company, Uber Technologies, Inc. (“Uber”), is aggressively attempting to curtail this gamesmanship, which they allege has risen to the level of outright fraud by several law firms and medical practices around the country. Uber has filed three federal civil lawsuits in 2025 under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”)1 in New York, Florida, and most recently, California.2 All three of these lawsuits are against various law firms and medical practices that Uber accuses, to varying degrees, of engaging in schemes to fraudulently increase the costs of rideshare personal injury claims.
Uber’s lawsuits seek civil remedies, allowed by RICO, including restraining orders, injunctions and treble damages as well as other damages and remedies. Uber’s civil RICO lawsuits do not constitute criminal prosecutions of the alleged activities.
Uber Technologies, Inc. v. Downtown LA Law Group, et al., No. 2:25-cv-06612 (C.D. Cal.)
In its lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles, Uber alleges that “[u]nscrupulous personal injury attorneys and corrupt medical providers in the Los Angeles area are engaged in [a] fraud scheme” whereby “[t]he lawyers direct claimants to pre-selected medical providers to receive procedures for minor or non-existent injuries.”3 Uber asserts that “[r]ather than using claimants’ own medical insurance for treatment, the claimants instead enter into lien agreements with the medical providers, which grant such providers a lien on recoveries from the claim and purport to promise full payment to the medical providers in the event of a shortfall in recovery.”4 Uber calls these arrangements “shams” because “the claimants’ lawyers and certain medical providers secretly enter into side agreements under which the medical providers agree to substantially discount their bills in the event that the recovery is insufficient to pay the artificially inflated medical bills.”5
Uber contends that this scheme of “overtreatment and inflated liens” results in “claimants themselves commonly walk[ing] away with relatively minimal recovery compared to the fees that the [claimants’] lawyers and medical providers receive.”6 Uber notes that “[w]hile rideshare companies are prime targets, they are by no means the only victims of this scheme… . It extends well beyond the defendants described herein.”7
Uber states that it is a prime target of these fraud schemes because California law requires rideshare companies to maintain “$1 million government-mandated insurance policy limits— which are higher than those of almost every other vehicle on California roads.”8
Uber seeks equitable relief, treble damages, costs, and attorney fees. Defendants have not yet filed a responsive pleading in the California lawsuit.
Uber Technologies, Inc. v. Wingate, Russotti, Shapiro, Moses & Halperin, LLP, et al., No. 1:25-cv-00522 (E.D.N.Y.)
In its case filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, Uber alleges that the “Defendants—personal injury attorneys and doctors who specialize in treating personal injury plaintiffs—are conspiring to exploit passengers in purported or actual minor vehicle collisions and provide them with medically unnecessary and/or causally unconnected ‘treatments,’ up to and including invasive and painful surgeries such as spinal fusions, for conditions that are fictitious, exaggerated, or that preexisted the purported accident.”9
Uber asserts that the defendants in the New York case “fabricated medical evidence that bears no relationship with the actual injuries that the passengers experienced (if any), in an attempt to fraudulently induce settlements from Uber and others.”10 To accomplish this fraudulent scheme, Uber claims that “Defendants knowingly and willfully misrepresent material facts at every turn—to the passengers, to the courts, and to parties to such meritless litigation, including Uber.”11 Uber contends the defendants’ scheme involves wire fraud, mail fraud, and bribery.12
Here too, Uber seeks equitable relief, treble damages, costs, and attorney fees. The defendants have not yet filed a responsive pleading but have indicated that they will likely file motions to dismiss Uber’s first amended complaint.
Uber Technologies, Inc. v. Law Group of South Florida, LLC, et al., No. 1:25-cv-22635 (S.D. Fla.)
In its case filed in federal court in Miami, Florida, Uber alleges an extensive scheme whereby the defendant plaintiffs’ attorneys and medical providers “conspire with staged accident participants to generate an excuse to deliver unnecessary medical care, submit false insurance claims for recovery, and file frivolous lawsuits to sue for non-existent damages.”13 Uber claims that the defendants bribed drivers who use Uber’s app to stage accidents with cars involving multiple recruited claimants, and that the drivers and claimants then falsely reported the staged accidents to the police.14
According to Uber, these “claimants then proceed in tandem on a conveyor belt of medical services, receiving false diagnoses of injury, unnecessary imaging, needless and repetitive delivery of physical therapy, and expensive and unneeded pain injections.”15
Uber seeks the same damages as in the above two cases. Defendants have not yet filed a responsive pleading.
Implications to Personal Injury Cases Involving Aviation Industry Defendants
We also are noticing a rising trend of personal injury cases against our aviation industry clients where plaintiffs’ attorneys send their clients to treat with pre-selected medical providers who bill their services subject to a medical lien, often at highly inflated rates. Most of these plaintiffs have health insurance – either through their employer’s workers’ compensation carrier, private insurance, or Medicare/Medicaid – but their attorneys steer them to their pre-selected doctors who often recommend and conduct questionable or unnecessary treatment and then bill for their services at exorbitantly high rates, all on a medical lien.
The act alone of sending a personal injury plaintiff to treat with a doctor who provides treatment subject to a medical lien is not illegal as courts have ruled that personal injury plaintiffs are free to select doctors of their choosing and to use, or not use, any available health insurance.
Defendants’ recourse in such situations is typically to show that the rates charged by these medical providers are above the usual, customary, and reasonable rates charged by other doctors for similar treatment in the same location. This, of course, adds defense costs by requiring additional discovery from the plaintiffs and their medical providers, and often requires retaining a medical billing records expert to opine on the usual, customary, and reasonable rates for the treatment received, in addition to retaining physician experts to opine on whether the type of treatment was reasonable and necessary.
It is too early to tell whether Uber’s high profile RICO lawsuits will succeed and if these lawsuits will give other plaintiffs’ attorneys pause about whether to send their personal injury clients to medical lien doctors for treatment and potentially expose themselves and their pre-selected doctors to similar fraud allegations.
Uber’s approach of filing civil RICO lawsuits to curb the rise of personal injury lawsuits by plaintiffs obtaining medical treatment through liens is novel and will likely be costly, but the impetus for the suits may also be a desire for legislative reforms to lower insurance coverage requirements for rideshare companies.
Multiple news outlets have reported that part of Uber’s motivation in filing these lawsuits is to obtain legislative reforms that would lower the amount of insurance coverage that rideshare companies are required to carry in order to lower rideshare fares, as insurance premiums can comprise a significant portion of the rideshare fare – up to 45% of a fare in some locations, according to Uber. The New York City Council recently passed legislation, which Uber supported, that lowered required taxi and rideshare insurance coverage from $200,000 to $100,000 per person. The California legislature is considering a similar bill that would reduce required rideshare insurance coverage from $1 million to $100,000 per person.
We will continue to monitor these cases and their potential impact on future personal injury claims.
Disclaimer: This publication is made available for educational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice. If you have questions about any matters in this publication, please contact the authors directly. General inquiries may be directed to info@nullcondonlaw.com.
1 18 U.S.C. §§ 1962(c)-(d).
2 Uber Technologies, Inc. v. Wingate, Russotti, Shapiro, Moses & Halperin, LLP, et al., No. 1:25-cv-00522 (E.D.N.Y.); Uber Technologies, Inc. v. Law Group of South Florida, LLC, et al., No. 1:25-cv-22635 (S.D. Fla.); Uber Technologies, Inc. v. Downtown LA Law Group, et al., No. 2:25-cv-06612 (C.D. Cal.).
3 Complaint, Case No. 2:25-cv-06612 (C.D. Cal.), Doc. No. 1, at p. 3.
4 Id.
5 Id.
6 Id. at p. 4.
7 Id. at p. 5.
8 Id.
9 Amended Complaint, Case No. 1:25-cv-00522 (E.D.N.Y.), Doc No. 68, at p. 1.
10 Id.
11 Id. at pp. 1-2.
12 Id. at p. 2.
13 Complaint, Case No. 1:25-cv-22635 (S.D. Fla.), Doc No. 1, at p. 1.
14 Id.
15 Id. at p. 2.