“A 57 ½ Hour Workday”: Ford Targets Law Firms Over Lemon Law Billing, Ford Stock (NYSE:F) Notches Up

While the phrase “Time Lawyer” might sound like an interesting, if wildly unconventional, title for a science fiction novel, it is the kind of unexpected reality legacy automaker Ford (F) found itself facing. It took aim at several law firms in California over their billing in cases involving the state’s “Lemon Law.” Investors seemed pleased enough with Ford fighting back, and shares notched up fractionally in Thursday afternoon’s trading.

Ford took aim at nine separate defendants in a Los Angeles federal court, referring to the defendants’ billing processes as a “magical mystery tour” of what one report called “…fraudulent…inflat(ion)…” Ford alleged that the lawyers involved spread their time over what reports called “thousands of cases” against “several automakers” so that the behavior in question would go unnoticed.

Perhaps the centerpiece of Ford’s counterattack is the claim that, somehow, one attorney managed to turn in 57.5 billable hours…in one day. And yes, a day still contains 24 hours, leaving it physically impossible for any one attorney to turn in more billable hours than there are hours in a day. Further, reports noted, the time-traveling lawyer in question–Amy Morse with Knight Law Group–was not the only such temporally-gifted entity the law firms employed. In fact, “numerous” instances of lawyers billing more than 24 hours in any one day emerged. One lawyer apparently managed to bill 29 hours in one day, as said lawyer “…prepare(d) for, travel(ed) to, and attend(ed) two trials…” in one day that were located around 400 miles apart.

Jack Cooper, Back From the Dead….Sort Of

Not so long ago, we had a report about a company that has a lot of connection with Ford: Jack Cooper. The car hauler was unceremoniously shut down after Ford pulled most of its contracts with the firm. But apparently, a former Jack Cooper employee, McKinley Archie, did not take this lying down. Archie, along with three others, gathered capital together and started Squirrelly LLC, a car hauling company.

One of Squirrelly’s first deals was with Ford, the reports noted, and now, the former Jack Cooper employee who started his own firm, along with a collection of other, close friends and colleagues, is back hauling Ford. So far, the reports note, the former Jack Cooper employees have hauled 17 loads to dealerships in Michigan, and nine loads to Texas dealerships.

Is Ford Stock a Good Buy Right Now?

Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on F stock based on two Buys, 12 Holds and three Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 13.46% loss in its share price over the past year, the average F price target of $9.59 per share implies 8.58% downside risk.

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