On October 2, 2017 the Supreme Court denied the plaintiff’s petition for certiorari in McGee v. Coca Cola Refreshments U.S.A., Inc., letting stand the decision by the 5th Circuit holding that Coca Cola vending machine was not a “place of public accommodation” covered by Title III of the ADA.* Last month a District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania applied the same reasoning to a DVD rental kiosk. Nguyen v. New Release DVD, LLC, CV 16-6296, 2017 WL 4864995 (E.D. Pa. Oct. 27, 2017). Neither McGee nor Nguyen mention an earlier case, Jancik v. Redbox Automated Retail, LLC, 2014 WL 1920751 (C.D. Cal. May 14, 2014) that also attacked automated machines allowing DVD rentals. Interestingly enough, in Jancik v Redbox the defendants conceded that their DVD rental kiosks were places of public accommodation subject to Title III of the ADA. It apparently never occurred to them that the difference between a public accommodation and a mere “service” was whether the goods were delivered by a machine instead of a human. Were they wrong? These cases illustrate a real problem with the way “public accommodation” is defined in Title III. More
ADA Internet Web
Quick Hits – ADA news of note
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation, ADA Internet Web Tags: "drive-by" ADA lawsuits, ada litigation, ADA Mootness, deaf access, Fix First then Fight
It has been an eventful three weeks in the world of ADA and FHA litigation. Rather than picking and choosing among the various cases that deserve attention we’ve provided some quick analysis of the cases with immediate relevance to most businesses.
Ford v. H Unit Five, Inc., 2017 WL 4271433 (D. Utah Sept. 25, 2017) illustrates just how low plaintiffs and their counsel will sink to make money on ADA claims, and how courts can eliminate such claims. The plaintiff, a serial filer whose lawsuits were all identical, seems to have cheated when measuring ramp slopes by measuring the “wing” of the ramp rather than the ramp itself. She claimed to be disabled, but the disabling conditions were not obvious and perhaps non-existent. Faced with a defense motion for summary judgment and the risk of perjury she elected not to provide any evidence of her disability or any evidence of alleged accessibility violations beyond pictures taken by her lawyer. The Court had no trouble dismissing her claims. The takeaways for business:
- You can win a dubious ADA lawsuit on summary judgment if you are willing to incur the expense of fighting to that point.
- Some courts will limit ADA surveys to the allegations in the complaint. This thwarts plaintiffs who try to expand their lawsuit after it is filed, but is not common, especially in the Ninth Circuit, where broad standing has just about destroyed the restrictions on discovery in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Fair Housing Justice Center v. Allure Rehabilitation Services, LLC et al, 2017 WL 4297237, (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 26, 2017) should remind nursing homes and senior communities of all kinds that reasonable accommodation policies for dealing with the deaf must be flexible. The defendants got in trouble because, in response to telephone testing, they said they would not provide American Sign Language interpreters. An outright refusal to provide an auxiliary aid or service in response to a reasonable accommodation request under the ADA or FHA is almost always a mistake. The rules don’t have hard boundaries, but when responding to inquiries about facilities for the deaf the basic policy should be:
- When the need for an interpreter involves medical care and there is time a request to provide an ALS interpreter should be granted at the expense of the business.
- A business that regularly deals with medical problems for deaf clients or residents should invest in video and other alternate means of providing ALS interpreters on short notice.
- If the need for an interpreter is not medical you must balance the complexity of the interaction, the notice given and the cost. If there is sufficient notice, providing at least video ALS is the safest choice.
- MOST IMPORTANT – when you get a phone call about services for the disabled, never say never. The appropriate response is always that you follow HUD guidelines and deal with requests on a case by case basis. Then you can sit back and make a decision on what to do.
Kayla Reed v. CVS Pharm., Inc., 2017 WL 4457508 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 3, 2017) is a web accessibility case with a few important points for businesses operating in the Ninth Circuit, as well as other observations of interest to any business
- Use of “store locator” service, which is almost universal, is sufficient to create the required nexus between the website and a physical location. Because the case was decided on a motion to dismiss the Court does not address the question of whether fixing the store locator would be enough even if the rest of the website remained inaccessible.
- The court rejected the idea that it was a violation of due process to require accessibility when there are no regulations defining accessibility. The specifics of the required remediation were, according to the court, a matter of remedy properly taken up at the end of the case. It distinguished Robles v. Dominos Pizza LLC, 2017 WL 1330216 (C.D. Cal. March 20, 2017)* on the ground that it was decided when the court was trying to fashion a remedy, at which point it was important to know just what the law required. Now that DOJ has abandoned its regulatory efforts** courts will be forced to grapple with how to define the remedy for inaccessible websites. Most will certainly take the easy way out and simply require WCAG 2.0 success level AA.
Guadalupe Adams v. Rohnam Wichita, LLC 2017 WL 4338398, (D. Kan. Sept. 29, 2017) is a default judgment case illustrating why, in some rare circumstances, default may be a good strategy. It is notable that the Court’s judgment does not include specific injunctive relief. The defendant is simply ordered to “alter the motel to make it readily accessible to and useable by individuals with disabilities to the extent required by the ADA.” Figuring out what it means to comply with the ADA usually involves considerable time and expense, which in this case the plaintiff must incur if it is enforce its judgment. It also seems unlikely that this judgment is enforceable by contempt because it is so vague. My suspicion is that after collecting attorneys’ fees the plaintiff will simply move on and the judgment will become a meaningless piece of paper.
Haynes v. Brinker Int’l, Inc. 2017 WL 4347204, (S.D. Fla. Sept. 29, 2017) is one of a series of recent decisions from Florida holding that if a defendant enters into a consent decree or settlement requiring website remediation subsequent claims under the ADA will be moot. When and how non-physical changes moot claims under the ADA is complicated, and these cases seem to reflect a recognition by federal courts that unless mootness is applied with some liberality there will be not end to copy-cat website accessibility lawsuits filed for fun and profit. Our earlier blogs on the risks of settlement discuss some cases that took a different approach.***
*See our blog Victory and confusion in ADA internet litigation – what next? for a discussion of this and other recent cases.
** ADA and the Internet Update – DOJ sends its regulations to Hanger 51
*** Beware the ADA settlement that buys a big bag of nothing, Starbucks and the ADA – more perilous settlements and temporary victories, The yin and yang of ADA defense. Perilous settlements and temporary victories
ADA and the internet – you can be tagged for what your vendors do wrong.
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web, ADA Web Access
Near the end of the decision in Gil v. Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc., 2017 WL 2547242, at *3 (S.D. Fla. June 12, 2017) the trial court includes in its injunctive relief a requirement that Winn-Dixie “require any third party vendors who participate on its website to be fully accessible to the disabled by conforming with WCAG 2.0 criteria.” This ruling rests on the ADA’s prohibition of discrimination “through contractual, licensing, or other arrangements.” [See, 42 U.S.C. §12182(b)(1)(A).] Winn-Dixie is a good reminder that becoming WCAG 2.0 compliant means focusing not just on your own website, but also on all the websites or web services to which you link. That can be a problem for businesses without much economic power.
Winn-Dixie is not a small business, but the web service providers mentioned in the Winn-Dixie decision, American Express and Google, are much bigger. Most businesses need third party vendors more than those vendors need them, so they aren’t likely to be able to force a change or do without the service provided them. This is an especially serious problem when the third party service is a pure internet business with a strong legal arguments against any ADA accessibility obligation. You might ask a vendor like Paypal or Google to guarantee accessibility for your customers, but you aren’t likely to succeed.
This disparity in bargaining power may be an excuse for partial non-compliance. In Natl. Assn. of the Deaf v. Harvard U., 2016 WL 3561622, at *16 (D. Mass. Feb. 9, 2016), report and recommendation adopted, 2016 WL 6540446 (D. Mass. Nov. 3, 2016) the court recognized that the ability to control third parties might play into the question of whether providing access presented an undue burden. As is so often the case in ADA litigation, once you reach the complexities of economic bargaining power and the advantages of similar but not identical third-party services the battle becomes so expensive that few businesses can afford to put up a fight.
Whether or not a business thinks it can negotiate with a big third-party vendor, it should at least consider the accessibility of third party websites and web services when deciding who to do business with, and it should document some effort to find accessible third-party vendors. Otherwise it may find that its own efforts to be accessible will not protect it from ADA liability while the courts slowly – very slowly – work toward resolving the nature of ADA obligations for websites.
Hunt paper on Winn-Dixie decision published by Usablenet.
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web Tags: ADA Internet, ADA regulations, ADA web, WCAG 2.0
Richard’s paper on the “Practical Implications of the Winn-Dixe Lawsuit” was posted to the Usablenet blog on August 23, 2017. This short paper reviews the history of application of the ADA to the Internet and the practical consequences of the present confusing state of the law. You can access it using the link above.
You may also be interested in our other recent posts on this subject:
ADA and the Internet Update – DOJ sends its regulations to Hanger 51
Baby steps – the first post-trial decision on the ADA and the internet.
Trending now – the ADA covers some of the internet, maybe.
ADA and the Internet Update – DOJ sends its regulations to Hanger 51
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web, ADA regulations, ADA rulemaking, Uncategorized Tags: ADA Internet, ADA Title III Regulations, ADA web, Department of Justice ADA Regulations, WCAG 2.0
DOJ’s recent decision to put regulations concerning the internet and the ADA on indefinite hold has important implications for business, but not all of them are good.* It seems likely this move was prompted by executive orders from the Trump Administration requiring that agencies review proposed regulations and limit those that might increase costs to business. This has not been a notable success in terms of dollars. The savings so far ($22 million per year) amount to only .3% of the cost of regulations issued in the last five years. More important, at least with respect to the ADA, DOJ’s calculation that no regulation saves money ignores the very large cost imposed on business by uncertainty about how to deal with internet accessibility in an age when suing under the ADA is a large and growing industry. The proposed DOJ regulations, while they were absolutely wrong about the scope of the ADA with respect to the internet, at least provided business and the courts with guidance about what might be required. Without the regulations we are left in a wild wild west of conflicting court decisions and no officially sanctioned standard by which to judge internet compliance. More