While maintaining your car is necessary to ensure it is fit for the road, it is not necessarily cheap. Perhaps this is why 77% of cars in a recent study were found to need either maintenance or repairs. Car owners might feel like they are paying a lot for repairs by their mechanics, but they are not the only ones whose wallets are hurting.

State Farm and other auto insurance companies are being taken to court by auto repair companies across the country who argue that insurance companies are compromising safety for costs. While many of the repair shops involved are from the Central Florida area, federal suits from several other states will be consolidated in Orlando courts as well.

Repair shops claim that insurance companies are not paying enough for the proper repairs to be done on cars that need maintenance. Shortcuts are being taken, resulting in major safety hazards.

One shop that has been on the front lines of the battle with insurance companies is Gunder Auto Center. Owner Ray Gunder says that he has had many cars come to his shop that had issues because of bad repairs done at shops where insurance companies are calling the shots and cutting corners in an attempt to save money.

These lawsuits are expected to draw swarms of attorneys for both insurance companies and auto repair shops from across the U.S. over the next year.

There are 46 auto repair companies represented in a large Florida lawsuit, along with cases from four other states, including Mississippi, Tennessee, Utah and Indiana that will all be consolidated in Orlando. These states are not the only ones calling out State Farm, however.

Buddy Caldwell, Attorney General of Louisiana, recently filed a lawsuit against the auto insurance giant for similar cost-cutting schemes in Louisiana repair shops.