This Memorial Day we are once again firing up the grill with hundred dollar bills to celebrate how the ADA its current form encourages litigation that makes lawyers rich without any correspondening improvement in meaningful access for the disabled. The first case presents the unappetizing picture of a single claimed lack of access generating parallel state and federal proceedings as defendants and plaintiffs maneuver for a procedural advantage. The last explores the exploitation of California law by plaintiffs who can use internet accessibility claims to bring the whole world into their favorable local courts. In between we will see some courts pushing back, though only in the most egregious cases. More
ADA – serial litigation
Pushing the needle too far – ADA website demand letters may be unethical
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web, ADA Web Access, Internet Accessibility Tags: ADA attorney ethics, ADA defense, ADA website defense, Oscar Rosales
An April 3, 2019 decision from Texas’ Third District Court of Appeals should give pause to many lawyers filing website accessibility lawsuits under the ADA. In Commission for Lawyer Discipline v. Rosales, Case No. 03-18-00147-CV (April 3, 2019)* the Court of Appeals wrote this about an ADA website demand letter:
“And regardless of whether Rosales “believes” that the ADA applies and that the WCAG guidelines establish ADA standards, the question of whether the ADA applies to websites is, as Rosales admits in his briefing to this Court, an unsettled issue that courts across the country disagree on. To that extent, his statement that “the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to websites” is, at best, a misrepresentation and, at worst, dishonest and deceitful.” More
ADA website litigation – is there a regulatory fix?
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - serial litigation, ADA Internet Web, ADA Litigation Procedure, ADA Movies, ADA Web Access Tags: ADA defense, FHA Defense, WCAG, WCAG 2.1
I’ve blogged before about the problems created by a lack of ADA website regulations, including the difficulty courts have deciding just what “accessible website” means.* The Circuit Court most likely to shed light on this issue is the 11th Circuit, for the pending Gil v Winn-Dixie appeal presents the question directly. There is, however, a more fundamental problem. It may not be possible to create an objective standard for accessibility. I’ll explain why by looking at the most commonly referred standard, WCAG 2.x and showing that it is impossible to determine objectively whether any website actually conforms to WCAG 2.x at any Success Level. More
Quick Hits – Tax Day Edition
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation, ADA - Standing, ADA FHA General, FHA design/build litigation, First Fix Then Fight, Uncategorized Tags: ADA defense, ada litigation, FHA Defense, FHA design/build litigation
A third of the reported ADA and FHA decisions in the last three weeks involved a single plaintiff, Scott Johnson. Mr. Johnson’s name is often found in this blog because he has been a fertile source of decisions on a wide range of ADA issues. As discussed below, outrage is one common response to his lawsuits.
Outside the courts my ADA news feed delivers two kinds of articles for the most part. One kind complains about serial filers and their impact on local businesses. The other complains about the lack of accessibility in public accommodations and governmental entities. Neither seems to ask the big question that I have asked for years: Can’t we find some better way to increase accessibility than wasteful private litigation? The present system is a failure, as evidenced by the fact that decades after passage of the ADA private lawsuits continue to increase in number. Nonetheless, the two sides of the serial litigation issue seem stuck on a fruitless debate about the morality of serial filing instead of trying to address the possibility of a genuinely effective system of enforcement. And with that sermon behind us, here are your tax day cases. More
Quick Hits – St. Patrick’s Day Edition
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - Hotels, ADA - serial litigation, ADA - Standing, ADA Attorney's Fees, ADA Internet, ADA Litigation Procedure, ADA Mootness, FHA, FHA Reasonable Accommodation, Uncategorized Tags: ADA Counters, ADA defense, ADA Mootness, FHA Defense
I’m a day late with the St. Patrick’s Day Edition of Quick Hits but that’s no reason not to raise a toast to the saint who, as my great-grandfather William Mullin said, drove all the snakes out of Ireland except the politicians.