In 1955, a man named William Greenman got a Shopsmith for Christmas. Two years later, while he was turning a piece of wood into a chalice on the lathe (we had to Google this too), the piece flew out of the machine and hit him in the forehead.
The set screws holding the lathe together were defective. The manufacturer knew the tool would be used without inspection. Greenman sued.
That case, Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. (1963) 59 Cal.2d 57, changed American law. Justice Roger Traynor, writing for the California Supreme Court, held that a manufacturer is strictly liable when a defective product injures someone. You don’t have to prove negligence. You don’t have to untangle the chain of contracts between the factory and the store. If you put a dangerous product on the market and someone gets hurt, you pay.
Justice Traynor’s reasoning was simple. The manufacturer profits from putting the product into the stream of commerce. The consumer is powerless to discover hidden defects. Forcing the injured person to prove exactly how the company was careless puts the burden on the wrong party.
That was sixty-three years ago. California built the strongest consumer protection framework in the country on that foundation. And ever since, industries facing liability exposure have tried to tear it back down.
They always use the same playbook and they always call it something that sounds like it’s for you.
The Playbook
1975: The medical industry’s turn. California passed the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA), codified at Civil Code section 3333.2. It capped noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases at $250,000. The framing they used was: frivolous lawsuits are driving doctors out of California. The reality: the cap stayed frozen at $250,000 for nearly fifty years, while the cost of everything else tripled. The most seriously injured patients, the ones with the worst pain and the longest recoveries, absorbed the difference. (The cap was finally raised in 2022 by AB 35, to $350,000 for injuries and $500,000 for wrongful death, with annual increases. It only took half a century.)
1996: The insurance industry’s turn. Voters passed Proposition 213, codified at Civil Code section 3333.4. It stripped uninsured drivers of the right to recover noneconomic damages in car accidents. The framing they used was: personal responsibility. If you don’t carry insurance, you shouldn’t get a full recovery. The reality: the people most likely to be driving uninsured are the people who can’t afford premiums. The law punishes poverty, not irresponsibility. And it does nothing to prevent accidents.
2026: The tech industry’s turn. Uber has spent more than $30 million backing a ballot initiative called the “Protecting Automobile Accident Victims from Attorney Self-Dealing Act.” It cleared signature gathering last December. The framing they’re using is: trial lawyers are self-dealing at the expense of accident victims, and capping their fees protects the injured. The reality: a contingency fee isn’t lawyer profit, it’s the bet that pays for the case to exist. If it qualifies for the November ballot and passes, here’s what it does:
It caps attorney contingency fees in motor vehicle accident cases at 25% of the recovery. It limits medical expense awards to 125% of Medicare reimbursement rates. It applies to product defect claims involving vehicles, including claims against manufacturers of autonomous vehicles. And it makes violating the fee cap a misdemeanor.
Read that list again. This initiative doesn’t just affect rideshare cases. It applies to every car accident in California. Every truck collision. Every motorcycle wreck. Every pedestrian struck in a crosswalk.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
The fee cap sounds reasonable if you’ve never hired a personal injury lawyer. Twenty-five percent! The client keeps seventy-five! What’s the problem?
The problem is math. Personal injury cases are expensive to litigate. Depositions cost thousands. Expert witnesses cost tens of thousands. Medical record collection, accident reconstruction, and biomechanical analysis all add up. A serious injury case can require $50,000 to $100,000 in upfront costs before it ever reaches a courtroom, and the lawyer fronts all of it. If the case loses, the lawyer eats the loss.
At a 25% cap, the economics break down for any case that isn’t simple and high-value. Say your damages are $150,000 and the case requires $40,000 in costs. At 25%, the attorney’s fee is $37,500, minus the $40,000 in costs they already advanced. They’re underwater. No rational attorney takes that case.
The people who lose aren’t the ones with million-dollar claims. They’re the ones with $75,000 or $150,000 in damages: broken bones, months of physical therapy, lost wages. Mid-range cases that used to be the bread and butter of trial lawyers. Those cases become unfundable.
And the medical expense cap is worse. Limiting recovery to 125% of Medicare rates sounds technical until you realize that Medicare reimburses at a fraction of what medical care actually costs. If your surgery costs $80,000 and Medicare would reimburse $25,000, the initiative says you can recover $31,250. The remaining $48,750? That’s yours to figure out.
The Timing Is Not a Coincidence
Uber has invested up to $1.25 billion in Rivian to build fifty thousand robotaxis. The first vehicles are slated for San Francisco and Miami in 2028, with expansion to twenty-five additional cities after that.
Think about what happens when an autonomous vehicle injures someone. Under current California law, the injured person can sue for full damages, hire a lawyer on contingency, recover actual medical costs, and pursue a product liability claim against the vehicle’s manufacturer or software developer. Greenman and its progeny say: if you put a product on the road and it hurts someone, you’re liable.
Under Uber’s initiative, that same injured person would face a 25% fee cap that makes it harder to find a lawyer, a medical expense limit that slashes their recovery, and a provision that specifically applies to product defect claims involving vehicles. The company deploying the robots wrote the rules for what happens when the robots cause harm.
Justice Traynor warned against exactly this in Greenman. The court refused to let a manufacturer define the scope of its own responsibility for defective products. Sixty-three years later, a manufacturer is trying to do it through the California Constitution.
What You Can Do
Know what’s on your ballot. If this initiative qualifies for November, it will have a title that sounds like it protects you. Read the actual provisions. The name is marketing.
Understand what a contingency fee actually pays for. It’s not just the lawyer’s time. It’s the risk, the upfront costs, the years of work before a dollar comes in. Capping it doesn’t save you money. It prices you out of the legal system.
Check your own insurance. Whatever happens with this initiative, your UM/UIM coverage is your first line of defense when someone else’s insurance isn’t enough. If your limits are still at California’s $15,000/$30,000 minimum, raise them.
If you’ve been injured in an accident and you’re trying to figure out whether your case is worth pursuing, call us. That calculation might look very different depending on what happens in November.
Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Satnick Lau LLP, Los Angeles, California.