Jacob Emrani Lawsuit: Uber’s RICO Claims and the Defense

The Jacob Emrani lawsuit is a federal racketeering case filed by Uber Technologies on July 21, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, accusing the Los Angeles personal injury attorney, his firm, a second law firm, a spinal surgeon, and a surgery center of running a coordinated scheme to inflate injury claims from minor rideshare accidents and extract oversized settlements from Uber’s insurance.¹ The case is Uber Technologies v. Downtown LA Law Group et al., No. 2:25-cv-06612, before Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett.² Motions to dismiss filed by Emrani and his co-defendants remain pending as of early 2026.

Who Uber Sued

Alongside Emrani and the Law Offices of Jacob Emrani, the complaint names the Downtown LA Law Group and its attorney Igor Fradkin, spinal surgeon Dr. Greg Khounganian and his practice GSK Spine, and Radiance Surgery Center, also known as Sherman Oaks Surgery Center.¹ Uber is represented by Perkins Coie.³

What the Complaint Alleges

Uber’s core accusation is that the defendants worked together to turn low-speed collisions into six-figure insurance claims. According to the complaint, the two law firms would sign up passengers or drivers from minor Uber crashes, steer them away from their own health insurance, and route them to Dr. Khounganian and Radiance Surgery Center. The providers would then allegedly diagnose exaggerated or nonexistent injuries and perform unnecessary tests and surgeries, including spinal fusions and lumbar discectomies, billing at rates Uber says were up to ten times accepted norms.⁴⁵

Uber also alleges secret side agreements between the attorneys and providers. On paper, claimants signed lien agreements making them personally liable for the full medical bills regardless of case outcome. In practice, Uber says, the providers had agreed to discount or drop their liens if a settlement did not cover the inflated bills, so the lawyers still collected their contingency fees. Uber characterizes the referral flow as a kickback scheme, and says the true contingent nature of the fees was hidden from claimants and from Uber’s adjusters.⁵⁶

Claimant Examples in the Filing

The complaint walks through several individual cases to illustrate the alleged pattern:

Claimant A was in a crash Uber describes as having “negligible damage” and no initial injury report. The Emrani firm allegedly referred the claimant to Dr. Khounganian, who performed two spinal surgeries. Billed charges totaled $556,151; an independent audit commissioned by Uber valued the services at a fraction of that.
Claimant B was in a low-speed collision and initially reported no pain. Khounganian allegedly recommended future spinal surgeries estimated at $265,000 each and performed a lumbar discectomy after a telehealth consultation, without an in-person physical exam. Lien-based treatment costs reached at least $330,308.
Claimant C was a passenger in a minor collision on the way to LAX who lived roughly 1,800 miles away in St. Louis, yet was allegedly funneled into the same Los Angeles provider network.

In one instance reported by the Mercury News, an independent expert valued services billed at $108,463 by the surgery center at $10,374.⁵

What Uber Is Asking For

Because the case is brought under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, Uber can seek treble damages, meaning three times its actual losses, plus attorneys’ fees and punitive damages. The company is also asking for equitable relief, including injunctions and the possible appointment of a court monitor or receiver over the defendants’ practices.⁴

How Emrani and the Other Defendants Are Responding

The defendants deny the allegations and have moved to dismiss. In November 2025, the Law Offices of Jacob Emrani, the Downtown LA Law Group, and Fradkin filed motions to dismiss, with one firm calling Uber’s account of the alleged scheme “mere fantasy.”⁷

The Downtown LA Law Group called the allegations “baseless” and said they were designed to “suppress legitimate injury claims,” adding that Uber chose to settle every one of the supposedly fraudulent cases during litigation rather than take any of them to trial. A representative for Dr. Khounganian called the lawsuit an “orchestrated political ‘hit piece’ disguised as litigation” and said his care is evidence-based and driven by medical necessity.¹

The Legal Argument That Could Sink Uber’s Case

The defense has a recent, closely comparable ruling to point to. Ford Motor Company brought a similar RICO suit against a group of California lemon-law firms, alleging inflated billing and fraudulent fee petitions. On November 24, 2025, U.S. District Judge Michelle Williams Court dismissed much of Ford’s case, ruling that the alleged conduct was “at least ‘incidental to the prosecution of the suit'” and therefore shielded by the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, which protects the constitutional right to petition the government, including the right to file lawsuits.⁸ Judge Court dismissed Ford’s RICO case entirely on March 10, 2026.⁹

The Ford ruling does not bind Judge Garnett, but it gives the Emrani defense a template. If the personal injury claims filed by the two firms qualify as genuine petitioning activity rather than “sham” litigation, Uber’s RICO theory could hit the same wall. The narrow exception is for lawsuits that are objectively baseless and brought solely to harass, and legal commentators have noted that RICO plaintiffs “almost always miss the mark” because the pleading standards for fraud-based predicate acts are demanding.¹⁰

Where the Emrani Case Fits in Uber’s National Strategy

The California suit is one of at least four Uber has filed against personal injury lawyers around the country:

South Florida (June 2025): Uber sued the Law Group of South Florida, attorney Andy Loynaz, several medical providers, and drivers it accuses of physically staging collisions in the Hialeah area. The complaint alleges drivers were bribed to open the Uber app and then gently rear-end a lead car of co-conspirators, with damage manufactured at body shops afterward. The case has been stayed pending a motion to dismiss in a parallel New York action.¹¹¹²
New York (September 2025): Uber sued the Manhattan firm Wingate, Russotti, Shapiro, Moses & Halperin in the Southern District of New York.
Pennsylvania (September 2025): The Philadelphia firm Simon & Simon was targeted in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.³

Across the four states, Uber says the same pattern is at work: lawyers and medical providers exploit the high insurance limits mandated for rideshare companies to turn low-value claims into outsized settlements. Those limits are $1 million in California, Florida, and Pennsylvania, and $1.25 million in New York.³

The Insurance-Reform Backdrop

Uber has argued in court and in Sacramento that these high coverage floors incentivize fraud, saying inflated personal injury costs account for 45 percent of an Uber fare in Los Angeles County.¹ While the Emrani case was pending, Governor Newsom signed SB 371 on October 3, 2025, lowering California’s uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage requirement for rideshare companies from $1 million to $60,000 per individual and $300,000 per accident, effective January 1, 2026.¹³

Consumer Watchdog has challenged Uber’s framing, alleging the company misrepresented its insurance structure to state legislators and pointing out that Uber self-funds coverage through a captive insurer called Aleka that nearly doubled its reserves between 2023 and 2025.¹⁴

Where the Case Stands

Judge Garnett has not yet ruled on the pending motions to dismiss. Whether Uber can move past that stage will turn on whether the court views the alleged conduct as a coordinated criminal enterprise pleaded with the particularity RICO demands, or as aggressive personal injury lawyering protected by the right to petition, as Judge Court found in the Ford case.²

1
ABC7. Uber Files Federal Lawsuit Against Known LA Personal Injury Attorneys, Accuses Fraud
2
Law360. Uber Technologies v. Downtown LA Law Group et al.
3
LCBF. Uber Files Series of RICO Suits Against Personal Injury Lawyers Across the US
4
WorkComp Academy. Uber Alleges LA Doctors, Lawyers Filed Fraudulent Claims
5
Mercury News. Uber Accuses LA Lawyers, Surgeon of Faking Client Injuries to Inflate Medical Claims
6
Okorie Okorocha Law. Uber RICO Complaint (California)
7
Law360. Uber’s Fraud Claims Against LA Firms Is ‘Fantasy,’ Court Told
8
ALM. Ford v. Knight Law Group, Dismissal Order
9
Law.com. Ford’s RICO Case Against Lemon Law Firm Comes to a Screeching Halt
10
Jenner & Block. Guide to RICO Civil Claims
11
Okorie Okorocha Law. Uber RICO Complaint (South Florida)
12
ATRA. ATRA Report on RICO Litigation
13
Uber. California Insurance Reform
14
Consumer Watchdog. Uber Misrepresented Its Insurance Structure to Legislature