California regulates everything — except the trial lawyers exploiting it

California has perfected the art of regulating productive industries into oblivion while giving bad actors with the right political connections a free pass.

With more than 395,000 regulatory restrictions, the nation’s eighth-highest corporate tax rate, and an overzealous bureaucracy, Sacramento has driven hundreds of major employers — including Tesla, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise — to business-friendly states like Texas.

California was once the crown jewel of American opportunity, but Sacramento’s progressive priorities have turned it into a cautionary tale.

Yet, while Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) micromanages everything from Hollywood film permits to brush-clearing fees, Sacramento looks the other way as an unchecked plaintiffs’ bar undermines local communities and distorts the justice system.

The latest investigative reporting out of Los Angeles County shows how far this racket has gone. Predatory personal-injury law firms have turned an environmental remediation challenge at the Chiquita Canyon Landfill into an unregulated gold rush, illustrating why the Trump administration and federal authorities must step in before those in Sacramento make the situation worse.

For years, the foothill community of Val Verde has dealt with noxious odors caused by an inactive portion of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill. The landfill operator tried to act as a responsible partner: complying with environmental guidelines, coordinating with multi-agency response teams, and providing nearly $25 million directly to affected local residents through a community relief fund.

Rather than encouraging a constructive resolution, a chaotic web of overlapping state regulators — including South Coast Air Quality Management District, L.A. County Public Works, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board — paralyzed the site with conflicting mandates, ultimately forcing the critical facility to halt waste intake.

Rather than protecting residents, progressive governance turned Val Verde into what locals described as the “Val Verde Hunger Games.” Text messages uncovered in court filings revealed Downtown L.A. Group boasting “PackemRackemStackem” and demanding recruiters “Get em for me … all of them,” leading to thousands of dubious claims that the landfill’s attorneys have flagged as infected with misconduct.

This dynamic is emblematic of California’s broader livability and business environment crisis. Sacramento imposes the nation’s highest income tax and an annual $800 LLC fee on entrepreneurs, yet allows predatory litigation mills to exploit vulnerable, non-English-speaking residents for 40% to 45% contingency fees.

Overregulation does not stop trash from being generated; it merely shifts waste to distant facilities, spikes consumer hauling costs, and enriches opportunistic trial lawyers.

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Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images

When state and local bureaucracy paralyzed debris removal following Southern California’s wildfires, the Trump administration took decisive action. Under Executive Order 14181, federal authorities expedited cleanup operations and completed in just 28 days what state bureaucrats estimated would take over a year.

The Trump administration and the Environmental Protection Agency under Administrator Lee Zeldin must apply that same standard of execution to Chiquita Canyon. The EPA must supersede Sacramento’s overlapping alphabet-soup agencies, streamline the process under unified federal oversight, and ensure actual technical remediation takes precedence over regulatory extortion and predatory lawsuits.

California was once the crown jewel of American opportunity, but Sacramento’s progressive priorities have turned it into a cautionary tale where critical infrastructure is strangled and legal grift thrives.

If Sacramento refuses to rein in its rogue plaintiffs’ bar and fix its broken regulatory state, the federal government must remind Californians to restore that which Newsom destroyed: common sense.