Jay Leno dismissed tabloid speculation that he has a massive gambling debt to the mob following a series of increasingly bizarre injuries that he suffered in recent years.

In November, Leno was spotted in public with severe bruising to his face and an eye patch after an incident where he fell down while descending a 60-foot hill outside a Hampton Inn hotel in Pennsylvania. Leno also suffered a broken wrist and a lost fingernail following that accident.


Two years earlier, Leno suffered significant burns to his face after a gas fire, which he blamed on an attempt to declog a fuel line on his 1907 White Steam Car in his garage. Leno had to undergo skin grafting procedures to tend to his face, chest, and hand burns.

The incidents involving the accident-prone Leno led to unfounded rumors that something more nefarious was afoot, which Bill Maher broached to Leno when the former Tonight Show host was a guest on the Club Random podcast.

“It’s a conspiracy theory since you’ve had three accidents that you actually have gambling debts and you’re being beaten up by the mob,” Maher said to Leno.

Leno reasoned, “I love the idea that the mob would drive to Greenberg, Pennsylvania, wait outside the Hampton Inn on a kind of sleety, rainy day to throw me down a hill.”

Maher then clarified that, according to the tabloid buzz, the hill-tossing was just a “cover story,” and that “they just beat you like the mob always does.” Maher then pointed to another Leno accident — after the gas fire, and before the hill fall — where Leno “fell off his motorcycle, wink wink.”

"Leno's Law" (a.k.a. California Senate Bill 712) was amended on March 24, 2025, so that eligible collector cars—those 35 years or older—don't need to have collector-car insurance to be exempted from the state's smog rules. The bill has also been revised so that eligible vehicles will never have to pass a smog test after you sell or buy a car that's 35 years or older. California Senate Bill 712, set to go before the state's transportation committee next month, aims to provide a smog-testing exemption for cars built in 1990 and earlier. Originally, the bill stipulated that it couldn't just be any daily driver but a vehicle insured as a collector car.

However, that language has since been omitted. Also, one of the biggest names in California car collection has put his weight behind the issue. In fact, SB-712 has picked up the nickname “Leno's Law,” as Jay Leno has been outspoken about the need to relax emissions regulations for classic cars.


California already had such an exemption in place back when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, a rolling 30-year exemption for older cars. This was pushed to the current pre-1976 regulation in 2005.

The average age of a car in the United States is between 12 and 14 years old, so cars that are more than 30 years old are only a small segment of what's on the road. A vehicle that's at least 35 years old is already exempt from certain portions of the existing emissions test; the proposed bill just extends things to full exemption.