Legal Question in Consumer Law in California

Re: Filing a claim without permission

If you're talking about "your" own attorney, unless you had a retainer agreement with the attorney, you can argue that you never retained that attorney if s/he should sue you for fees. Of course, if you benefited from the lawsuit, that argument would lose steam.

If the attorney's fees are because litigation permitted the other party to collect such fees, then there's an argument that you should have known about the lawsuit as it made its way through court.