If you live in California, you may start seeing petition circulators outside grocery stores, malls, and public buildings with a friendly pitch like: “Help car crash victims keep more of their settlement.”
It sounds reasonable—until you read the fine print.
Uber is backing a proposed California constitutional amendment (Initiative 25-0022A1) that would cap contingency fees in auto cases and, more importantly, restrict what injured people can recover for medical care. The practical result is that many injured victims—especially those without catastrophic injuries or unlimited resources could find it harder to get medical treatment and harder to hire a lawyer to take on an insurance company or corporate defendant.
This is a familiar playbook. Uber supported similar efforts elsewhere (including Nevada). When a company faces mounting financial exposure from crashes and safety lawsuits, one way to reduce how much they need to pay out in compensation to victims isn’t to improve safety it’s to make it harder for victims to bring cases at all.
What Uber’s California initiative would do (at a glance)
California’s Attorney General title and summary describes the measure this way:
- Caps contingency fees so auto accident victims “retain at least 75%” of their recovery but does not restrict fee arrangements for defendants’ attorneys that are fighting against victims.
- Restricts medical expense recovery and raises the burden of proof for certain medical damages.
- Prohibits important financial arrangements between attorneys and medical providers that can help victims pay for medical care.
It’s also important to understand the scope:
- It applies to all Uber rides and goes even further by applying to every motor vehicle accident case too.
- It is an initiative constitutional amendment, meaning it would be embedded in California’s Constitution, making it harder to fix any harms it causes later.
- It was cleared to begin signature gathering in December 2025, and proponents must collect 874,641 signatures by June 8, 2026 to qualify it.
The truth about contingency fees (and why they exist)
A contingency fee is simple: the lawyer only gets paid if the client wins.
That structure is not some quirky “lawyer perk.” It’s one of the few things in our civil justice system that gives ordinary people a fighting chance against:
- Large corporations,
- Major insurers, and
- Well-funded defense firms that can bill $800–$1,500/hour without blinking.
In real injury cases, a lawyer often has to pay substantial case costs up front. Things like: crash reconstruction, medical experts, depositions, court reporters, imaging, records retrieval, and more. Those expenses can be tens of thousands of dollars (and sometimes far higher) before a case ever reaches a settlement conference or trial.
Without contingency fees, access to justice becomes pay-to-play. The people who can afford hourly fees keep their rights. Everyone else gets offered pennies or nothing.
Why “victims keep 75%” is a misleading sales pitch
The initiative is marketed as if it’s simply cutting “greedy lawyer fees.” But a fee cap doesn’t hurt a massive company the way it hurts a victim.
Uber (and insurers) will still hire elite defense counsel. And the measure is explicit: it does not restrict defendants’ attorney fee arrangements.
So what happens in the real world?
1) Fewer lawyers can afford to take your case
There’s a reason the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) acknowledges the measure could reduce filings because attorneys would likely decline to take cases due to reduced compensation.
That doesn’t mean fewer crashes. It means more victims without representation.
If you were hit by a reckless driver and your damages are “only” $50,000–$150,000, your case can still be expensive to prove. This is especially true if liability is disputed or medical care is ongoing. A hard cap makes many of those cases economically impossible to pursue, which is exactly why big corporate defendants like these proposals.
2) The measure is not just about fees—it shifts leverage to insurers and can reduce likely compensation
In any injury case, leverage comes from the credible ability to take a case to trial and win. If the economics make trial unrealistic, the insurer knows it. That drives settlement values down and increases delay and denial.
3) The fine print about costs is complicated
The LAO analysis notes that litigation costs are deducted before calculating the fee percentage.
In other words, the math and incentives aren’t as simple as a petition clipboard slogan. The bottom line is still the same: the measure makes it harder for victims to find counsel, and it makes it easier for powerful defendants to outlast them.
The even bigger problem: The initiative restricts medical recovery
This is the part that should alarm every California driver and every California family because it affects medical care, not just lawyer compensation.
Under the initiative and the LAO summary, the measure would limit medical damages in ways that can reduce compensation for care and create new hurdles for proving medical expenses.
Among other things, the initiative:
- Limits recovery for certain unpaid past medical bills (often associated with medical liens) using benchmarks like 125% of Medicare or 170% of Medi-Cal, and other rate databases where Medicare/Medi-Cal rates don’t exist.
- Imposes a higher burden of proof (“clear and convincing evidence”) for recovering certain past unpaid medical expenses.
- Changes evidentiary rules in ways that can affect how medical expenses are presented and recovered.
What does this mean in practice?
It can reduce access to treatment – especially for the uninsured and underinsured
Many people injured in crashes rely on treatment arrangements that allow care now and payment later (including lien-based treatment). The LAO explains that liens are one way crash victims obtain care, and that if compensation doesn’t cover the bill, the patient can be responsible for the rest.
If the law makes it harder to recover full medical costs (or harder to prove them), some providers may refuse lien-based treatment or limit what they’ll do—especially for patients without robust insurance.
It can shift costs to taxpayers
Even the official fiscal summary flags the possibility of increased Medi-Cal costs, in the “millions to tens of millions” annually, partly because fewer victims may recover compensation that offsets Medi-Cal spending.
So California could end up with a system where:
- Corporations and insurers pay less
- Victims recover less
- Public programs pay out more of your tax money
That’s not “consumer protection.”
“But aren’t there bad lawyers and bad referral arrangements?”
Sure. Every profession has bad actors.
And California already has very effective tools to address misconduct: State Bar discipline, civil remedies, criminal statutes where applicable, and targeted regulation.
This initiative doesn’t address misconduct at all. It rewrites the rules for everyone by constitutional amendment.
How to spot this petition in the wild (and what to do)
If someone asks you to sign a petition related to “auto accident victims” and “lawyer fees,” slow down and read what you’re signing.
Here are some practical tips:
- Ask for the initiative number (look for 25-0022A1 on the petition materials).
- Read the official title carefully: it explicitly references limits on victims’ recovery of medical expenses and attorney fees.
- Remember: the measure applies far beyond Uber rides. It’s about auto accident cases generally.
The bottom line
This initiative is being sold as a way to help injured people “keep more.” In reality, it would:
- make it harder to hire a lawyer in many real-world crash cases,
- limit what injured victims can recover for medical care and raise proof hurdles,
- leave corporate and insurance defense spending untouched,
- and potentially shift costs to Medi-Cal and the public.
It’s a rollback of consumer protections and accountability.
Need help after an Uber (or any) crash?
If you or someone you love was injured in a crash involving an Uber or Lyft, or any serious motor vehicle collision in any state in the country, our attorneys can evaluate your case. We handle complex injury and wrongful death claims and you won’t pay a dime unless we win for you.