In Texas and across the country, commercial vehicle operators have become litigation targets. Billboards along Texas freeways are crowded with 12-foot-tall scowling lawyers, arms folded, asking if you’ve been injured by a semi-truck. Search online for a business alongside the words “injured“, “accident“, or “lawyer,” and the advertising machinery becomes visible immediately: paid results populate the top of the page, each one a law firm with a financial stake in your next accident. This is not just opportunism; it is a nationwide infrastructure. In most states, personal injury billboard lawyers have created a claim origination assembly line, deploying the same data-driven acquisition strategies as any sophisticated services startup. For years, when there was a commercial vehicle accident, the standard corporate response was to settle. Cases large and small settled not because a claim was valid, but because the math said to. Defense costs and jury unpredictability made litigation feel like a losing game even when a case was defensible. In big cities, this era is largely over, and businesses are fighting back.Since 2024, companies and insurers have filed dozens of RICO lawsuits across the country, not challenging individual claims but attacking the networks that are built to manufacture and inflate litigation. Since the 1970s, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act has been used to dismantle corrupt organizations like the mob, giving prosecutors a way to target criminal enterprises and private parties a way to protect their business interests. Now, insurers and companies, historically defendants in litigation, are turning RICO against corrupt personal injury law firms, case runners, and affiliated medical providers who are accused of fabricating and inflating claims. The companies going on the offensive are varied. FedEx recently sued a New York personal injury firm over allegations it ran a coordinated scheme involving doctors and clinics to stage and exaggerate vehicle crashes. In 2025, Uber filed a series of RICO lawsuits in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City, alleging networks of attorneys and medical providers manufactured accidents and systematically inflated settlement values. Closer to home, insurer Allstate filed a RICO lawsuit against a Houston-based medical network alleging fraudulent billing, kickbacks, and unnecessary treatments for auto accident victims. The list goes on. Why are companies fighting back now? Two primary reasons. First, the economics of litigation have changed. Personal injury lawyers spent an estimated $2.5 billion on advertising in 2024. This marketing budget is on par with Ford Motors or Verizon Wireless. Claims are sourced through billboards, TV, radio, and refined digital targeting. Some of this is financed by foreign investors with no stake in the underlying injury nor a friendly relationship with the United States. Enlarged through networks of financially aligned medical providers, lawsuits are enlarged and prolonged. Routine accident cases have become an investment tool. Plaintiffs in these cases are often relegated to becoming cogs in a machine rather than the central focus of a fair civil justice system.Second, state legislatures’ “hands off” approach has allowed a fractured civil justice system to fester. In most states, the legislative response to a system that rewards litigation volume and legal leverage over merit has been total paralysis. This inaction forces companies, insurers, and most importantly, consumers to absorb the litigation tax, paying for costs that better-designed rules could easily prevent. And we have a path forward. With Florida and Georgia offering the clearest roadmap. Recently labeled “judicial hellholes” because of runaway verdicts and litigation abuse, both states moved aggressively to rewrite the rules of engagement. By cracking down on predatory attorney tactics, Florida consumers are seeing corrections in real time. After years of 30% premium increases, major insurers in Florida (covering 80% of the market) are cutting rates on average of 8%. Uber announced that Florida riders have saved tens of millions of dollars since reforms took effect. The most striking data point came this week, when USAA CEO Juan Andrade told CNBC that Florida’s reforms enabled his company to return nearly $1 billion to Florida policyholders through dividends and premium reductions – and that legal defense costs for the industry in the state fell from roughly $3.5 billion to $100 million since reform took effect. “This is really all about tort reform in the state of Florida,” Andrade said. Georgia’s reforms, while more recent, are showing early promise. Insurers are cutting rates by 5-10%. Public entities like MARTA are reporting millions in reduced liability costs.When companies go on the offensive, alleging coordinated, systemic abuse rather than individual instances of fraud, they are often called out for “corporate aggression.” What they are actually doing is calling out institutional failure. When private actors are forced to perform oversight functions that should be the domain of regulatory and legislative bodies, it is a clear sign that those systems need repair.The ideal outcome is one where this level of confrontation is unnecessary. Where lawmakers set clear and predictable terms, the system reverts to its intended purpose: resolving genuine disputes fairly and efficiently.The tools for reform exist, and the evidence of their efficacy is available. The only remaining variable is whether the political will to do the work materializes before the current dynamic becomes further entrenched.
