A pair of recent cases, both brought by the same law firm on behalf of different plaintiffs, underscore the importance for every business of having policies and procedures for both ADA compliance and maintenance. This is especially important for businesses with multiple stores because a policy and procedure class action will elevate a single bad parking space to a nationwide class action, making both remediation and settlement or remediation very expensive.* More
ADA Policies
Quick Hits – Our Black Friday special offer
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation, ADA - Standing, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web, ADA Mootness, ADA Policies, ADA Web Access, FHA Emotional Support Animals
Black Friday is approaching. In honor of the annual sales we’ve collected a bevy of cases containing helpful lessons for any business subject to the ADA or Fair Housing Act.
Siler v. Abbott House, Inc., 2017 WL 5494989 (S.D. Fla. Nov. 16, 2017) teaches a simple lesson for HOA’s: call your lawyer before you do anything concerning a disabled tenant or resident. In this case the prospective tenant was, it seems clear, treated very badly by a condominium home owners association. The conduct went from merely improper (questions about her obvious disability and need for personal assistants) to just spiteful (moving an access button to make sure she couldn’t reach it). Despite a later letter from the HOA’s lawyer apologizing and trying smooth things over the Court refused to dismiss the tenant’s claims for damages and attorneys’ fees. This isn’t a final victory for the plaintiff, but it guarantees the HOA will spend tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees if it doesn’t settle. Every HOA needs a clear set of policies regarded disabled tenants, and if those policies don’t exist, the Board should not act without first calling a lawyer. More
Dialing for Dollars – Ninth Circuit encourages abusive ADA litigation
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - Standing, ADA FHA Litigation General, ADA Policies, Hospitality, Hotels Tags: ADA, ada litigation, CREEC, dialing for dollars, drive-by lawsuits, Hospitality Partners, Ninth Circuit, serial ADA litigation
In Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center v. Hospitality Properties Trust, 2017 WL 3401319 (9th Circuit, August 9, 2017) the Ninth Circuit decided once again to make abusive serial ADA litigation as easy as possible, ignoring both the constitutional limits on standing and the way cheap standing† has created a crisis in ADA litigation that Congress is only now beginning to fix.* The plaintiffs in Hospitality Properties Trust never visited the hotels they sued, relying instead on telephone calls in which they were supposedly told the defendant hotels lacked accessible free shuttle services. Beyond alleging the existence of these calls they included boilerplate allegations that they would have stayed at the hotel if there had been shuttle service and that they would visit in the future but were deterred by the ADA violation. This, they claimed, created an injury sufficient for Article III standing. More
Get it right the first time – the problem with “temporary” obstructions
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA Mootness, ADA Policies Tags: ADA, ADA Policies, ADA remediation, mootness, Starbucks
Billy Joel had a major pop hit in 1977 with “Get it Right the First Time” from “The Stranger.” Forty years later Starbucks has proven just how true this is. In Crandall v. Starbucks Corp., 2017 WL 1246749 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 5, 2017) the Court reminded Starbucks and every other public accommodation that “get it right the next time” is not the same thing as getting it right the first time. In fact, it is the difference between winning and losing.
The issue of interest in Crandall v. Starbucks concerned access to a counter that was blocked by a point of sale display. This is not a first for Starbucks as we described a couple of years ago in POS Marketing and ADA Compliance – you can’t have it both ways. In the earlier Kalani v. Starbucks case the defense was that POS sales items were only temporary barriers because they could be easily removed. The Court disagreed because, in its view, the POS displays were intended to be permanent even though they could be moved.The displays at issue in Crandall were a standing display placed so close to the counter that it intruded into the required 36 inches of clearance as well as displays on the counter itself. Some time after the lawsuit was filed the standing display was moved out of the way and the counter displays were removed. This, according to Starbucks, eliminated the need for any relief and required a defense summary judgment.
The Court disagreed, noting that the changes were not structural or permanent because the displays at issue were easily movable. Equally important, there was no evidence that Starbucks had adopted any policy against on-counter displays or concerning the placement of merchandise displays. Because Starbucks could re-create the barriers to access at any time the case was not moot.
So far, so bad, but worse was coming. The Court found the existence of a violation at the time the plaintiff visited and on two later occasions was established as a matter of law, refused to credit Starbucks’ argument that its employees would always move the displays to a correct position, and granted summary judgment for the plaintiff. “Get it right the first time” and there’s no lawsuit at all. “Get it right the next time” and you’ll be paying the plaintiff’s attorneys fees while contemplating a permanent injunction. In cases involving things like displays that employees place and move, getting it right the first time means having a policy in place before there is a lawsuit that requires employees to maintain an accessible premises.*
Crandall v Starbucks includes a complaint that the required route was not 36 inches wide, but it seems the Court granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs because it was undisputed “that when there are customers in the store the displays make the path of travel too narrow.” Id. at *14. The Court also found that accessible routes might be blocked in the future based on the “absence of any policy preventing customers from moving chairs around to other tables in a manner that might block the path of travel.” In both cases the problem identified by the Court is not any structural feature of the restaurant, or even a problem with where the furniture was placed by the staff, but rather a problem with the conduct of other customers.
It isn’t difficult to imagine that in an informal space like a coffee house or bar customers will feel free to move chairs and even tables, and may congregate in areas that are part of an accessible route. The ADA prohibition on “discrimination” applies to the design and construction of public accommodations and the removal of “architectural barriers and communication barriers that are structural in nature.” It doesn’t say anything about regulating the behavior of other customers. Starbucks has not been afraid in the past to take cases to the Ninth Circuit, and it would be nice in this case to get a definitive rejection of the notion that businesses are required to regulate customer behavior in order to comply with the ADA. In the meantime, businesses that are crowded or are pushing the limits of accessibility should be be careful.
*In a ruling this week a Magistrate Judge in the Western District of Pennsylvania approved class certification for a lawsuit against Steak & Shake that appears to rest primarily on a failure to properly maintain its parking lots. Last year this time we blogged about a similar lawsuit against Cracker Barrel restaurants brought by the same law firm. Does the ADA Require a Compliance Policy? Every temporary barrier caused by a lack of maintenance can turn into a permanent injunction if the right policies are not in place before a lawsuit is filed.
Does DOJ’s new definition of disability matter? Maybe.
By Richard Hunt in ADA, ADA FHA Legislation, ADA Policies, ADA regulations, ADA rulemaking, ADA Web Access Tags: ADA regulations, ADA rulemaking, definition disabled, Department of Justice
On August 11, 2016 the Department of Justice finally issued its regulations implementing the expanded definition of disability contained in the 2008 Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments. The actual content of the regulations, which apply to Titles II and III of the ADA, will already be familiar to most businesses because they are intended to be consistent with the EEOC’s 2011 regulations implementing the 2008 ADAA for Title I. Equally important, they appear after eight long years of lawsuits brought under the 2008 ADAA in which the courts and litigants had to wrestle with the meaning of the statute. More